What language is your novel written in? English? Mine too.
But I write science fiction, and that brings up a special point. If a sci-fi novel is written in the near future here on Earth, with characters who live and work in a world that is virtually identical to the world in which we all exist, there’s no problem. But suppose that your novel, like mine, is set in a vastly different time and place. On a foreign planet, or in a foreign country. What language do the characters speak?
Take Star Wars, for example. The Cantina scene in the first Star Wars movie is a good instance. (That movie is now called Star Wars IV, A New Hope.) A hundred characters or more, some humanoid if not truly human (was Luke Skywalker human?), and many non-humanoid. Yet most spoke English and had no trouble communicating with one another. (I have no idea what kind of language Chewbacca spoke.) In fact, most characters in the six Star Wars movies so far speak English, or a reasonable dialect thereof.
You may argue that the characters in these movies spoke English so we, as patrons of the cinema, could understand them. It wouldn’t do to have them speaking in their native tongue. That would make the movie practically unintelligible. Of course, I agree, and I understand that the choice of English was forced on those who made the movie (actors and production personnel) as a default because it is the mother language of most, if not all, who wrote the script. And that’s precisely my point.
My novels are written in English. I don’t speak another language well enough to write in a different tongue (Spanish, German, etc.). But my novels, like Star Wars, are set in a different time and place (though not a distant galaxy). My characters are not Earthlings; they have their own language and, presumably, speak it among themselves. Yet it is set down on paper in English. This creates several problems. First is the problem of simple translation. In most cases, I assume that I, as the transcriber of all the dialogue, am simply translating their language into English for the benefit of the reader. This works well most of the time, but I’ve come up against some questionable words and phrases that don’t go well into English, having to do mostly with objects and concepts that are found on their planet and not on Earth. This usually requires some explanation and takes a little time. This is not the biggest problem.
The second problem is the reverse, terms that are found in English but are not in the lexicon of my fictitious characters. This has given me more trouble. How, for example, do I explain the color “orange” or “peach” if their civilization has never had any such fruit? Is it proper to assume that, though they may not have that kind of fruit, they would have a term that describes that color? Is it appropriate under those circumstances to describe a yellowish color of a sunrise or sunset as “peach” because they understand the color if not the fruit? I certainly hope so, because that’s the concept I’m using.
A third problem of translating from a fictitious language has to do with the inflections and nuances of their language. These are hard to do in writing in any language because inflection, nuance, and dialect are auditory, not visual to begin with, and difficult to represent in writing. Translating from a fictitious language just makes the problem worse, because, on Earth, though we’re familiar with different phrasing and pronunciations (as, for example, a Spanish “accent,” or southern “accent”), we’re not familiar with the subtle accents and refinements of the language of the characters from my fictitious world. Do you know of any regional or local slang on Chewbacca’s world?
I’m wondering if others have come up against the same problem. Comments?