I've got a cold, that's making me depressed, and that means the recurring lack of confidence. What the heck was I thinking, trying to write, and why does it matter anyhow, in the greater scheme of things?
So while I'm dealing with that, an essay on the difficulties of writing other languages.
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First off, why do it at all? Well, because culture is interesting. We read to meet new people who do things differently than we do, and language is one of those things. A language is a way of looking at the world; the way concepts of gender or status or even a conception of time are embedded in it.
There are words like weltanschauung that are difficult to translate directly. Other phrases that can be, but lack a certain je ne sais quoi.
And, also, the struggle -- the experience of imperfect understanding, and the joys of discovery -- is a significant part of visiting other places and exploring other cultures.
But it is miserably difficult to present in fiction.
In older books written for an educated audience, it was expected they could grasp basic Latin and Greek and had a working understanding of German and possibly French. This is one of the few places where the power of the other languages could really be shared. The best modern equivalent I can think of, besides works that are by and for an already bilingual audience, is within anime fandom where "weaboo" Japanese can be thrown around with the assumption that many of the words and the cultural connotations will be familiar to the reader.
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So what doesn't work? Well, spelling dialect has largely gone out. When used, it is used sparingly, just a touch here and there to give the flavor. Readability is one reason. The other is that this has grown uncomfortable connotations. And I think this is as much a problem of the written word. Hearing a voice speaking in an accent is a different experience than seeing words that are spelled incorrectly. It comes across, to put it bluntly, as stupidity.
And, yes, this has been part of dialectical spelling all along. Huck's creative spelling isn't just giving us a taste of his accent, it is reminding us that he is uneducated. LOLspeak (and the related Dogetalk) are not, despite the existence of a functional and fully grammatical computer code based on the former, seen as a different but equal approach to spelling and grammar. They are seen as child-like, well-meaning but ignorant.
And that's before we get to specific use of certain dialects as signifiers -- aka, Black english forms as shorthand for "thug" -- and as the butt of jokes; infamously, the supposed conflation in Japanese speakers of the sounds of "R" and "L."
Another typical approach is to put some words of the other language in, untranslated. Unfortunately, the general reader has to be assumed to know only a few common words. This leads to the ridiculous situation where the French physicist is explaining, "To demonstrate the ridiculousness of this implication of quantum theory we imagine a box in which we place le chat..." And then, because even that might be too much for the monoglot audience, "...le chat, that is, a cat..."
Fortunately there are a couple of escape clauses. If the reader through the character is being introduced to a new cuisine or a martial art or even geography they can be given a number of new words to learn. These, however, are presented and isolated and explained; they are merely terms, such as you might learn terms used in chemistry. This is not living language.
The other is the "grease words." When you are in another country you frequently learn and use a few standard and simplified ways to say "hello" and "thank you" and even "pleased to meet you." This isn't quite phrasebook speech; you aren't trying to learn how to ask for a price or the direction to your hotel. These are simply polite ways of engaging with that culture.
This is the exception to the "funny foreigner" mistake. Instead of the use of only simple and common words being used because of the reader, these are being used by the characters. And they are justified; this isn't the artificial insertion of select words, these are the most common words used in daily interaction; and the place where using them is most polite. The use of the correct greeting essentially transcends language. "Arigatou" isn't "I'm speaking Japanese to be polite," it is "I am making the sound polite people make in this circumstance." It is no different than covering your arms when visiting a church or not showing the soles of your feet.
The biggest problem, though, is that these can come across as "le chat" usage for people who haven't had that experience of travel, or who did but never bothered to learn how to be sociable. It can also be difficult for some readers because we sometimes grasp the appropriate usage situationally; by watching other people. It isn't always a case of being told "memorize these three words, and here's what they mean."
Another place where the flavor can be put across is in grammar and usage. Stereotypically, the Russian speaker leaves off articles (because those don't appear in Russian) the French speaker puts in extra articles (because as a Romance language these are important to maintain the correct tenses for nouns), and the Italian speaker genders the articles (despite having the same Romance background, they pick up on this aspect instead!)
Stereotypically, then, "Boat is sinking," "The boat it is the sinking," and "The boat, she is sinking." And you see the problem already. As in the LOLspeak example above, it too easily comes across as ignorance instead of the intended glimpse into a different way of thinking about words. More subtle forms, such as using alternate word orders to suggest German, often fly by the reader. In cases, they may simply think the author is guilty of awkward phrasing!
***
Which brings us to Japanese. In A Fox's Wedding I am trying to put Penny in a situation where language is an actual barrier. Part of this is the meta-narrative conceit, the "speaks seven languages and eats lost tombs for breakfast," as Penny puts it; the idea of the globe-trotting archaeologist-adventurer. The conceit is that, although she thinks she is failing miserable, she is effectively communicating in other languages -- though luck, lots of help, and especially through a narrative which is going out of its way to make it possible for her.
And it is the reality that most Japanese are not comfortable in English. I chose the word carefully. Much of the world has to do business in English, and put up with English-speaking tourists, and those points of contact have a rough but workable knowledge. Japan, and a few other (mostly Asian) nations, has an official recognition of this challenge which they have addressed in a not always effective way.
The most accurate way of portraying a typical Japanese speaker is for there to be essentially no mistakes or incorrect grammar. The grammar may be quite stilted; it is, compared with native-level speakers, always dictionary forms and lacking in idiom. There are endless drills in Japanese classrooms and they really don't get this stuff wrong.
What they don't drill, however, is pronunciation. And here we bump into another peculiarity. The kana are not an alphabet, but a syllabary. And English has been imported into Japanese for a very long time, many words migrating into common use. Which means that even students of English fall back on writing out the unfamiliar words in a way they find easier to read (and given the absurdities of English pronunciation, who can blame them?)
This means this typical speaker is practically unintelligible to a native speaker of English. They realize this, of course. This makes them shy, which means they may understand English quite well and -- if they are recently out of school -- can probably write it better than the average American of similar age, but they prefer not to speak.
This is basically impossible to represent in a work of fiction.
Okay, it is possible, but it falls into all of the problems above. Hyper-correct grammar at least doesn't come across as uneducated; it just comes across as bookish and foolish (stereotypes that are already like to be applied). And the pronunciation! The R&L isn't even the worst of it, the kana-based pronunciation combines the excesses of comic-book Italian of the "It'sa me-a" variety, but gives it a sing-song flavor of the worst Asian stereotypes.
Absolutely impossible to have on the page in a modern novel.
So what am I actually doing? I really can't do much. I can just say, "He didn't speak much English." Or for those times when I need to have a long conversation, I arbitrarily make this one of the native-level speakers (who are not that uncommon). It does mean that, at best, Penny is strangely running into the skilled speaker she needs every time she actually has to communicate something beyond hello and thank you.
It's a puzzlement.
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