Bilingual Characters - Blog Posts

Question for fic readers!

Do you prefer to have translations for words in other languages in the piece of dialogue like just in brackets,

ex. "Dramatic unjann (child)."

or do you prefer to have a little dictionary at the top/bottom of the fic.

The mc of my fic speaks both french (which I'm just writing as english since it's from his pov and a first nation language called Mi'kmaq with his family and I just want to know what people are more comfortable with.

im going to have a stroke

You know what’s cringe?

People who don’t know what bilingual people speak like. Cuz like I speak English and Spanish and you know “Spanglish” is super fun. (I mostly see this in fanfics).

But I never go: Yeah and I was at la playa, you know— sorry I speak Spanish and I mix up words! Silly silly me, no se hablar English!

It’s more like: Y estaba en la playa when my mom called me and she was yelling at me and I didn’t even know what I did! I was like ‘Mami, Que hice? Why are you yelling!?’ (More or less something I told my friend a couple of weeks ago)

Then theres the whole “character forgets a word because they’re thinking in Spanish!”

“No, no, the flecha! You know, the thingy that lights up! Like— ugh, what’s it called? Its like— its a flecha! I can’t think of the English word!” (Arrow, its a light up arrow)

Its so awkward to read those.

Idk but being bilingual isn’t just adding a random non-English word into a an English sentence.

Or like having characters just go: “you’re my hermano/hermana, man!”

Or (the very cringe) “come on foo!” // “ese!” // “vato!” // or literally any other word associated with cholos or Chicano gangs.

Like pet names I get. I understand those. I used to call my ex “mi amor” “corazón de melon” “Bebe” “lindó” “guapo” and nothing else in Spanish. Those are understandable cuz those are pet names.

Make Spanglish sound real! (hmu if you want someone to look over your Spanish, specifically)