How to best handle multi-language situation in a story?

This is rather theoretical question at this point, and could live with no further addo, but just for example, here follows one (almost autobiographical) scenario I'm occasionally wanting to try to write about.

POV (P), self qualified jerk, is invited by Host (H) to party at nude beach and summer house to showcase H's newest catch, a pair of Swedish sisters (Sw1 & Sw2). It is understood as possible orgy. P ask ex-girlfriend (Ex) to accompany him, but she has her current boyfriend (B) in tow (and, B has a car), and brings her friend (Fm) as designated mate for P. P is not unhappy with Ex selection, but given a chance, picks up Virginal Girl (Vg) who has no idea what she's about to get into. Russian guy (R) with girlfriend (Dv) crash the party uninvited, but being among many H's acquaintances are accepted. There is some naughtiness going, but if it had any chance to descend in all out orgy, sparkling incompatibility between P and R prevent it. P walks Vg to the train station, then return to quietly fuck Fm, just because that's what they both expected. ((It actually could be first chapter in long story about Vg, spanning next five years, but that has little bearing here.))

Now relevant part, language use:

P: native Latvian, programming English, understand and can speak Russian, but avoid due to nationalistic stance, basic German.
H: native Latvian, fluent English and Russian, basic Sweden and German.
Sw1: native Sweden, good English.
Sw2: native Sweden, good German, little English.
Ex: native Latvian, fluent English, basic Russian.
B: native Latvian, speaks Russian, understands a little, but won't speak English or German.
Fm: speaks Latvian, Russian, English and Sweden (even better than H).
Vg: native Latvian, good German, understands but won't speak Russian and English.
R: native Russian, little German, understands but won't speak Latvian and English.
Dv: speaks Russian, Latvian and English.

Default language is Latvian, but there is no single language everybody would use or even understand. English is first choice when speaking with Sw1&2 for those who don't speak Sweden, but it is often bad and barely understood. Russian is introduced by R, who stubbornly will use only that, and many will switch when including him. Communallity of German is a discovery. Conflict between P and R arise when they stop ignoring each other and switch to German.

It is not always important what language is used when, mostly it isn't at all, but few times it could be, and it limit what can be said and understood and by whom. Story is from limited third person or even first person pov, so anything said in Sweden remains guesswork, for example.

I would rather avoid using renderings in actual languages, at least it can't be done consistently anyway out of the basic Lavian to English translation and would render the story borderline unreadable.

You have a very complex problem. One choice is to have the third person say the language for each statement. Probably would get old though.

If I was writing the story, I'd put it in the first person and then I'd have whatever R and Dv say be in Russian with the MMC translating for the reader. That would get across how he considers R's use of Russian to be rude. You could also mix in Latvian if the MMC translates.

H greeted me with a warm "Sveiki".

Click to expand...

But I'm not writing the story.

I would explain in an Author's Note at the start of the story that all the languages used have been recorded by the main character in ENGLISH unless he couldn't understand what was being said.

Edited for PS:

I remember going for a meal in London Soho's China Town in the mid-1960s. There were four of us. Two of us were Englishmen. The other two were a Swiss-French speaking woman and her fiancé who spoke Swiss-German.

I and the other Englishman spoke English to each other, French to the woman and German to her fiancé. She spoke Swiss-French; he spoke Swiss-German. We obviously understood each other perfectly which confused the waiters who were also surprised when the other Englishman ordered the meal in Cantonese.

If you're using limited 3rd person, the the protagonist (and reader) shouldn't understand what is being said, so I don't think it would benefit from adding dialogue only a minority of readers would understand. In thee instances, you could just describe it as the protagonist perceives it, e.g "P heard Sw1 and Sw2 in the other room, and while P couldn't understand what they were saying, it was clear Sw1 was upset. Was this because R had hacked Hillary's emails?"

And the country is Sweden, the language is Swedish. The distinction is important to avoid confusion in e.g. "anything said in Sweden remains guesswork."

Good luck!

Interesting idea to use language dynamics as a dramatic story element. I'd think that this kind of thing would come up more often in Europe than in the US. Have other European writers hit on a way to effectively convey this tension?

I've been thinking of a story with a much simpler version of this, in which all the characters speak English and Spanish, but with varying degrees of proficiency. My plan was to have the conversation switch back and forth between languages, with the English speeches in normal font and the Spanish speeches translated into English in italic font. The less proficient English speakers would make grammar and vocabulary mistakes, like in real life. I would try to convey lack of proficiency in Spanish by introducing similar types of mistakes into the translated speeches.

I also recently put up a story in which one of the characters speaks with a French accent. I had her say "zis and zat" instead of "this and that," and use a few "Frenchisms" like "oui" and "but of course." I also tried to make her speech sound just a little bit quaint sometimes when she was presumably translating too literally ("I will win you," instead of "I will beat you") or when she was going too strictly by the textbook ("you will know to whom I am speaking.") I got one comment saying that the accent was "surprisingly convincing" and one saying that it was "overdone."

I might suggest that something like this might work in your case:

You're writing in English for an English speaking audience. You can't assume that any of your readers will necessarily understand any of the other languages. Let's call the language of the story "Story English" to avoid confusion with the "Character English" spoken by some of the characters.

Try to make the language business as straightforward as possible. There's no need to even bring it up at the beginning of the story when everybody is speaking the default language. It only comes up when you introduce the Swedish girls and people have to negotiate a way to communicate. I take it you're European yourself, and so you probably know how these negotiations go. I'd find it very interesting if this were portrayed in the story. You certainly don't want to give an info dump as in your post. Introduce the specific details (X speaks A but not B) only as they are necessary in the story.

You're telling the story from P's close point of view. Therefore all the speeches in his language, Latvian, should be given in grammatical Story English. If a speaker doesn't speak Latvian proficiently, then there should be improficiencies in the rendered Story English versions of their speeches.

P doesn't speak Swedish, so he will not be aware of what is said in that language. One way to convey this would be to report Swedish speech in Swedish, so that it will sound as foreign to most readers as it does to P. But then you'll get criticized if you make any mistakes. A better way might be to just use a sprinkling of actual Swedish to give a flavor of the language, but to report longer speeches indirectly. << "Tack," she smiled. But then she turned to her sister and said something in Swedish that sounded a little less amicable. >>

The other languages are all intelligible to P, but foreign to him. They should be presented in Story English, but in italic font. (Even Character English should be presented this way.)

If there are words in the Character Language that are universally understood, you could keep them in the Story English rendering. << "Scheisse! What do you think you're doing?" >> But don't overdo this and don't depend on identifying the language this way. Like you say, most of the time the language spoken isn't too important. So when it is important, you'll probably just have to come out and tell us. << "I'll see you in a bit," I told her, in German so that Ex wouldn't understand. >>

Since you have speakers with so many different native languages speaking so many different other languages, I'd stay far away from trying to portray accents. That would just be way too confusing.

So I'd say try to keep the language issues as straightforward as possible. Write in the Story Language. Introduce foreign phrases only for color. Tell the reader when a speaker speaks in a particular language if it's important for the story. Don't try to be too clever.

Veiksmi! Tas izklausās kā interesants stāsts.

(Because when you try to be too clever, you have no way of knowing whether anyone besides Google will get it.)