how to write English speakers talk in French to keep conversation private

[SolarClint]

I have a story I'm writing where the mother and son are native English speakers, but when they need to say something in private they speak French. My thoughts are to have a translation after the French sentence ending "

eg: She said, "Merci beaucoup." (thank you very much)
I don't know if the parenthesis are good or bad.

Any thoughts?

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

That seems fine, as long as the need to speak French is meaningful to the plot. Or you can do what the TV show Shogun did this year, with how Portuguese characters started speaking Portuguese at first, then the show smoothly transitioned their tongue to English when the audience became accustomed to who these characters were.

 

[Bamagan]

I have a story I'm writing where the mother and son are native English speakers, but when they need to say something in private they speak French. My thoughts are to have a translation after the French sentence ending "

eg: She said, "Merci beaucoup." (thank you very much)
I don't know if the parenthesis are good or bad.

Any thoughts?

That'll probably be fine for anything up to a sentence or two, but might get unwieldy if one or both of them have a lengthy dialogue. But as suggested above, once you've established the pattern, if the characters have a long conversation, it'll probably suffice to just insert a reminder that it's in French without writing it all out in both languages.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I have a story I'm writing where the mother and son are native English speakers, but when they need to say something in private they speak French. My thoughts are to have a translation after the French sentence ending "

eg: She said, "Merci beaucoup." (thank you very much)
I don't know if the parenthesis are good or bad.

Any thoughts?

I'd drop the translation completely. If you've only got a few phrases here and there, use context to provide meaning.

Surely readers know the occasional foreign language phrase. You could put a note at the top, "This story contains occasional phrases in French" to give readers a heads up. If the idea is that the conversation becomes private, then it defeats the narrative purpose to provide a translation.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I think brackets would take me out of the story if used like this, especially if it happens on a few separate occasions. It wouldn't be enough to make me stop reading (provided the rest of the story was one I liked), but it does feel clunky imo.

I'll point you to a thread which we had on here a while ago about the same topic. The context is slightly different, but there are lots of replies and information that you might find useful:
https://forum.literotica.com/thread...actually-happens-in-another-language.1611336/

 

[stickygirl]

I added sentences in Polish to a couple of my stories and as EB suggests, context provides insight to the meaning. I know one or two readers used Google translate, which added an extra level of authenticity for them. No need to add a translation według mnie.

 

[StillStunned]

Come on, people! Don't be limited by dead-tree solutions: you can insert a link directly to Google Translate, so all the reader has to do is click to get the English translation.

(Note: I'm not necessarily advocating this. I'm not sure I'd like it if I was reading the story. I'm just pointing out that online publication offers more possibilities than we might immediately think of.)

 

[TheLobster]

Come on, people! Don't be limited by dead-tree solutions: you can insert a link directly to Google Translate, so all the reader has to do is click to get the English translation.

(Note: I'm not necessarily advocating this. I'm not sure I'd like it if I was reading the story. I'm just pointing out that online publication offers more possibilities than we might immediately think of.)

You cannot link outside of Lit so this is sadly out.

If <abbr> tag is supported or at least not stripped, you could maybe (ab)use it to provide translation that’s only shown when you hover over the text:

She said, “<abbr title=“Thank you very much”>Merci beaucoup</abbr>”

I don’t recall this being used in any story, though, so it may not be possible.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

If <abbr> tag is supported or at least not stripped, you could maybe (ab)use it to provide translation that’s only shown when you hover over the text:
...
I don’t recall this being used in any story, though, so it may not be possible.

It isn't. Literotica provides a list of the tags they allow here: https://literotica.com/faq/publishing/publishing-text-formatting

-Rocco

 

[TheLobster]

It isn't. Literotica provides a list of the tags they allow here: https://literotica.com/faq/publishing/publishing-text-formatting

-Rocco

That list is incomplete. <kbd> works, for example, which is useful for things like chat and text messages, and is not included there.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Although I cannot think of an example, I have seen books before where there is a footnote like this -
Dialogue in italics is spoken in French.
The stories would look like this.

"Hang on, Gloria," Mary said as she frowned and put her cell phone to her chest.

"Damn it, Mom. Can't you give me a moment's peace?"

Here on LIt, you could add the note to an intro paragraph.

 

[StillStunned]

Or ...

 

[Bazzle]

Or ...
View attachment 2380845

Are you going to tell us only once?

 

[StillStunned]

Are you going to tell us only once?

You stupid woman!

 

[TheWritingGroup]

That list is incomplete. <kbd> works, for example, which is useful for things like chat and text messages, and is not included there.

Thanks. I assumed it would be correct. Good tip for me.

-Rocco

 

[OffNSFW]

Comic books used to just use angle brackets to indicate when characters were speaking in another language. That wouldn't work here, since the text editor would interpret them as code, but you could try something similar with some other grouping symbol.

 

[Voboy]

Honestly? I'd probably write it in English after making sure the reader knew they were speaking French. I'd reinforce this by having a non-Francophone character nearby, nodding and smiling blandly as the two "French-speaking" characters said many blatantly offensive things about the bland smiler right in front of him. Sorta like the French waiter in European Vacation.

I'd make it a very funny sequence.

 

[TheLobster]

Comic books used to just use angle brackets to indicate when characters were speaking in another language. That wouldn't work here, since the text editor would interpret them as code, but you could try something similar with some other grouping symbol.

&lt; gives you a left angle bracket in HTML. I used that once to include the <3 emoticon in a story.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I'd go for some clarification in English, emphasising that X didn't understand. Or when really necessary, put the English in italics after - it seems less intrusive than brackets, but still needs to be done in moderation.

 

[OffNSFW]

&lt; gives you a left angle bracket in HTML. I used that once to include the <3 emoticon in a story.

Oh snap

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Okay, let’s go back to the original, a question WRT a short statement.

​

She said, "Merci beaucoup." (thank you very much)​

What would be wrong with this?

​

She said, "Merci beaucoup." ​

​

He smiled at her. “You’re welcome.”​

My point is that, for simple conversations, most if not all readers will pick things up without an explanation.

 

[ronde]

There are a ton of words in various languages other than English that are commonly understood. If I'm using one of those, it doesn't need a translation. Examples from French that come to mine are "au revoir", "oui", and "bonjour". Even if the reader doesn't know that word, the context can explain it well enough the reader understands, as in, "I knew she was leaving when she said au revoir."

To me, finding the translation of what was said in any type of special highlighting technique disrupts my involvement in what's going on. In some cases it can seem like the author is attempting to minimize my intelligence. By translating what he or she was clever enough to write with assumes that I don't know the language.

It's better to make that explanation seem "normal". One method is to have another character ask the speaker what he or she meant. That's a logical question for a person who doesn't understand the language to ask. Another method can be used if there are more than two characters in the scene. The French speaking character speaks the line and one of the other characters translates. Again, this would be a normal conversation to have in a mixed language group. Done either of these two ways, readers who are at least familiar with common French words will just read the explanation, nod, and the go on reading.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

I wouldn’t use actual dialogue, rather a prose description.
So, in place of “La derniere fois que me l’ai vue, Elle a brise le coeur de mon ami” followed by a clunky translation I would write “In French I told my mother about last time I saw her, when she broke my friend’s heart”

It also avoids the issue of autocorrect changing “Coeur” to “Coeducational”

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I've published some stories in which the characters speak in Japanese. I transliterated the Japanese into "Romaji", but left the phrases untranslated to convey the idea of a partial language barrier between the characters.

 

[onehitwanda]

I'd drop the translation completely. If you've only got a few phrases here and there, use context to provide meaning.

You'd think this would work, but when I did this, I got a (minor) telling-off.

I have a slight bone to pick with you. I understand zero French that is not already baked into American (USA) English. I have studied (but am not fluent in) Spanish, Biblical Hebrew, and American Sign Language, but French doesn't even sound familiar. My reading flow was interrupted because I kept stopping to plug French words into Google Translate.