Multilingualism for Writers

Add a new layer to your fiction with foreign languages

Mar 04, 2023

Languages are parts of our identities as much as functional methods of communication. While it may be practical to write in a particular language (or have something translated into one), there are cultural, political, and enjoyable reasons to include other languages within the your work. Even tiny inclusions can add levels of authenticity as well as intrigue, so it’s not as difficult as it sounds.

Writing that includes other languages in the body of the text is multilingual, just like a person who speaks many languages. Multilingual is a more generic term than bilingual (two languages), implying there is a wider matrix of languages at work. However, we might see this style with the inclusion of one other language in a bilingual text because of the context of the story or the nature of a translated work.

The inclusion of foreign languages is usually only a few particular key words rather than full dialogue or paragraphs. Practically speaking, the text appeals to speakers of the dominant language and too much interference breaks the flow. Films can push this opportunity further both due to visual cues to help the viewer understand and subtitles that simultaneously keep everyone on the same page. However, an untranslated text with too many footnotes or explanations might throw off your flow and simply sound like showing off.

Even if an author is fluent in another language, many texts that move between places and cultures remain monolingual, perhaps for simplicity of either the writing or the reading of the text or for the flow of the prose itself. For example, a spy thriller set in Berlin is unlikely to move among German, English, and Chinese or Russian in conversations. Not only would it be hard to follow but it would also disrupt the flow of the fast-paced story.

Still in an example like this, a few key words in foreign languages may add authenticity just as the inclusion of cultural sartorial choices do. And to go a step further, I could imagine plays on language in a text like this holding the key to a mystery or playing a part in a conversation of dramatic irony when a character does not understand what is happening in front of him/her. Let’s take a closer look at how this might work.

How to use multilingualism in your writing

You can use methods of multilingualism effectively even if you don’t spend your days between several languages like many of my Swiss friends (of whom I am very jealous!). Below, I trace several ways to use different languages in your fiction, drawing on literary examples, before discussing the benefits for both you and your readers.

Consider your audience

Firstly, you should have an audience in mind. Your text will likely be written for particular language speakers. If Anglophone, which we will use as the basis here only since this article is in English, then anything not in English needs to somehow be available to the reader.

Some communities of readers may be able to easily switch: a Welsh audience will understand English; a Moroccan text could be written between Arabic and French; a Hong Kong audience would be fine with a Cantonese and English novel; and a South African one might be able to move among its eleven official languages.

However, if authors also want the audience to be global, at least reaching others of the dominant language of the text, then even these examples may need to be careful how the ‘minor’ language is used. There are political reasons to use less spoken languages, but if you want to reach a larger audience, you might use a dominant one. Franz Kafka wrote and lived primarily in German though he lived in Prague his whole life. German was seen as a more intellectual language in the Czech dominant place and was also connected to his identity with the local Jewish population. His writing therefore was also political in the choice he made, which Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari discuss in “Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature: The Components of Expression” (translated by Marie Maclean).

So which language will be dominant in your text and which other(s) might you include for various reasons? Once you’ve made your decision, you need to think of the alphabet or characters used. If the language uses a different way of writing, do you want to phoneticize the words you use? Alternatively, some languages already have a way of writing them with the Roman alphabet, such as Chinese pinyin, and other methods have been researched, such as these many variations for Arabic. If you are using quotes from original sources, you may want to understand the particular sourcing style; for example, MLA calls for original script.

Include translations

For the vast majority of these multilingual writing projects, you will assume a common language of your readers and therefore need to somehow translate the words you include for them. This can be done explicitly or implicitly.

If you translate explicitly, you may use footnotes or endnotes, a translation following in brackets, or a direct translation from another character or the narrator. War and Peace includes full dialogues in French with footnotes. Even in the translations I have seen from Russian to English, the French remains to show Tolstoy’s original intention. French was the language of the aristocracy and also may show when the characters have “lost touch with authentic Russian values.”

In Our Country Friends, Gary Shteyngart weaves Russian and Korean words into his English novel to show the cultural identity of several characters, although all Americans. Typically, the translations follow in narration:

Ny vsyo, he thought in Russian. Well, I’m done for.
“Dorogoi,” Masha said (“My dear”)…

However, Shteyngart also manages to use words with implicit translations by weaving them into the fabric of his narration, perhaps to show just how normal a part of their lives these words are:

“Come on, Ed,” Karen said, “make naengmyeon for Nat. She’s dying to try it. Take a break from the Mediterranean shit. All that chee-juh is giving me gas…”
…he had already seemed like a fifty-year-old ajeoshi as far back as college, exhaling smoke of of the corner of his mouth…

Implicit translation in the text is easier with common words. In English, we also have loanwords that we borrow regularly from foreign languages ant that may even appear in an English dictionary. Many French words related to cuisine are in this category (bon appétit, hors d’oeuvre). Other examples include: kamikazi (Japanese), kitsch (Yiddish), and doppelgänger (German). Some of your characters may lace these borrowed words in their dialogue either because they share part of the culture or are trying to demonstrate something beyond themselves (perhaps they are annoyingly playing a role!).

But you might also be able to move beyond loanwords with implicit translation if the reader can determine the flow of thought without direct translation. Alternatively, many other languages now use English words as their own loanwords. You could include a short dialogue with embedded English loanword that would allow the reader enough information.

Make the reader work for it

Generally, this method is unadvisable. Readers should have the tools they need right in front of them to figure out what they are trying to say. Hoping your reader will just translate other languages you include on their own may be seen as snobby. However, depending on the type of text you are writing and the audience, asking your reader to do this could be a joy for them as well.

Practically speaking, if you are writing something to be produced solely online or as an e-text, readers could easily activate TransOver or similar apps to translate easily as they go. More experimental works might make use of this possibility or have creative ways to cue readers, such as integrated turn on / turn off translations.

Another reason you might leave the translation a mystery is that your narrator or protagonist doesn’t understand something themselves. By leaving the interpretation open, we are unsure what the protagonist takes from the scene as well. Perhaps you come back to the language later on. James Joyce did this in one of his Dubliners short stories called “Eveline.” Here, the inclusion of “Deravaun Seraun!” in Gaelic at the protagonist’s mother’s deathbed is unexplained and confusing even after attempting to translate the text. We generally come up with “the end of pleasure is pain,” but it can be interpreted several ways and has been the subject of several academic papers. Perhaps the mystery allows us to consider our own ideas about Eveline and her mother.

Check your understanding

Make sure you actually know the other language(s) you use enough to write with them or check carefully with somebody who does. Even some who are completely fluent in a foreign language (or three) might not know the details of grammar or usage in a different cultural context.

People will notice! Even a word to word translation can be wonky. Sometimes different cultures use different words for something even when they speak the same language. Of course, this is true in dialects but also in unofficial localized language. In England, when an American talks about dirty pants, the British get tight lipped and red faced. In a German grocery store, you ask for a Tüte to bring your food home while Austrians ask for a Sackerl. We know there are many examples of these, even between regions of the US (pop, coke, or soda?); it makes it more important to get your cultural context right and shows even more how the language choices can add to cultural identity within the text.

So if it’s not your native/fluent language, make sure you either read full articles on the foreign word you choose or check it with native speakers.

What’s the point?

The main reasons to use other languages in your writing are that it can be fun for both you and the reader and that it adds to the cultural layers of your text. Cultural identity can be explored more thoroughly through the use of other languages, whether the language is a mother tongue of the character or something they are interested in. We also place more value on other cultures in this way, rather than simply using them as plot device or setting. With greater authenticity (such as the inclusion of original characters and alphabets) we can place even more value on the language, especially if it may be considered ‘minor’ in some way.

Here are a few other reasons to consider this method:

Humor — mistranslations and the unsaid as well as dramatic irony can be lifted through multilingualism. In this clip from Life is Beautiful, the protagonist makes his audience laugh by pretending to translate German into Italian. Although the scene is also quite poignant and filled with characterization of our lovable protagonist, he uses false translation to help his community and make us laugh. As viewers with subtitles, we are privy to more information than any of the characters within the film.
Less limiting — sometimes we struggle to express an idea in another language. Perhaps you are writing in a foreign language to you. Using your mother tongue at times can help you to express yourself. There may be reasons to borrow other words to add to the nearly 200,000 English words we already have…where just the right one might not exist.
Polyphonic — the sounds of the words on your page are also a part of your story. This is especially true in poetry, but any kind of writing can consider the sound words create when read aloud or in one’s mind. By including foreign sounds, we again find authenticity as well as perhaps added layers of beauty. We have another harmony or chord to the melody of the dominant language.
Help readers learn something new — we can teach readers (and sometimes ourselves) new words in foreign languages. We can encourage readers to learn a foreign language. We can learn more about a culture through particular foreign words.

Consider why you even write in the language you do? Is it your first language, or one of them? Who else occupies your text? Could other languages help their impact on the reader or create a subtext of cultural or political ideas? Could it just be a bit of fun?

Try experimenting with this technique just to see how far you can go. Even using just one foreign word can pop from the text and make us move beyond the page, like allusion does. Gifting your reader with more language helps them to grow.