Including foreign languages?

The main character in my story this month happens to be Spanish, born in the 1940's, and he doesn't speak very good English. Since the story I'm writing happens to be in English, however, I'm not sure which is the best way to address Spanish phrases (of which I know a few, and am getting help from a fluent friend of mine--this isn't the issue.)

So, what do you guys think? Type out the phrases in Spanish and assume potential readers can google/know the language? Type out the phrases in Spanish and have footnotes? Type them in English but say they're in Spanish? Don't have direct dialogue to avoid the issue entirely? I'm asking for both reading and writing preferences here, so if you can give me any help, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks guys!

How to write an accent

It's stickied at the top.

I think this is more about the language than the accent...

I would say, for short phrases that people are likely to know (at least here in the US, where it's pretty common for kids to learn at least a little Spanish), leave them in, but if you have a conversation in Spanish, translate it and put "he said in Spanish" or something to that effect. Italics would help make this clear, and possibly remove the need to repeat "in Spanish" over and over (though that would help your word count ;)

Example:
"Hola, amigo!" he called. Hello, friend!
"Hey, how have you been?" I replied in Spanish.
"Pretty good, except that I got stung by a bee yesterday. My elbow's all swollen."
"Ouch; that looks pretty bad. Are you sure it's okay?"
"Oh yeah, I had the doctor check it out, and I'm not allergic."

There's no reason to put Spanish in there unless you're dealing with a word that does not have a direct English translation. Not everyone speaks Spanish, and it's just going to annoy people.

Have the dialogue in English, but just mention in the dialogue tag that it's taking place in Spanish -- don't even bother with the Italics.

I've been wondering about this myself (my story is set in a Spanish-speaking country). On the one hand, I think adding some Spanish words or phrases can add a nice flavor to the writing (as long as they're easily understandable. If you're wondering if it needs an explanation, either pick a different word or explain it through context. Ex: if your character says "¿Cómo estás?" and the other person says, "I'm good, how are you?" your readers will know what cómo estás means without you having to actually translate it).
On the other side of things, I feel like the occasional Spanish word or phrase can draw attention to the fact that everything else is in English!
As long as the characters are established through context as Spanish-speakers, I think the readers will assume that everything they say is in Spanish, even if they're reading it in English. Having said that, I do find myself sticking in the odd word or phrase, but I try to be consistent about it and not use random words, but establish a few things that I always put in Spanish, like a character's nickname, and then only use the Spanish version of that word. A big focus of my story is soccer, and I always, always, refer to it as fútbol in the story (partly to deal with the American v British English soccer v football issue haha).

I have a similar problem, and rather than start a new thread I figured I'd bump this one.

My story takes place in a fantasy world, and most of the characters speak a language called Telonian. So I've adopted the Translation Convention, and whenever anyone talks in Telonian it's represented as English. (I still mention the fact that they're speaking in Telonian when the story calls for it, e.g., "Nestris seemed like the kind of person who probably wouldn't be very talkative anyway, even if she were able to speak fluent Telonian.")

However, there's another language in the story (which I'm having trouble naming, it's referred to as Gyennish as of now, but I hate that name). One character only speaks Gyennish, and some others have varying degrees of bilingualism. I have used a multitude of strategies to convey the fact that another language is being spoken.

At first the POV character 'translated' for the benefit of the reader, e.g. "Hesitantly, she tried to ask Nestris for some food in Gyennish. . . . She was able to understand Nestris's reply as an affirmative." But Nestris (the Gyennish-only character) soon morphed into a major character, so that got old.

Then I used dialogue tags like " 'blah,' she said in Gyennish," trying to use them as sparingly as possible while still making it clear what language was being spoken. Soon I switched to angle brackets <> to convey Gyennish dialogue, and a few times I even 'left the dialogue untranslated,' i.e. made words up, to convey that the POV character didn't understand what was being said anymore than the reader.

Then I wrote a side story focused on Nestris's past, in which she was the POV character, so I used regular quotes as if it was English. Now the Gyennish-speaking characters have become so prominent in the story that whole scenes go by entirely in Gyennish, and I've stuck to putting it in angle brackets.

So what do you think is the way to go? Particularly, do you think the angle brackets are okay?

tl;dr: One language is represented as English; the other is pointed out as being 'foreign'; I'd like your comments on the various strategies I've been using.

I've seen it done really well in comic form, using angle brackets or different fonts.

I've got--so far--four languages in my novel: English, Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog. The main character is Filipino, and so speaks all of them but Chinese (which I guess is more accurately Mandarin or Cantonese or whatever, but they're somewhat minor characters who haven't found their subplot yet, so I haven't figured that out yet.). But I have other major characters (including the main character's sister, who speaks all four of those languages, and possible more), and most of them are bilingual at least, speaking English and their native language.
So far, it's been fairly easy, because when there's a mix of races, they speak English, and when there's only one nationality involved, they speak their own language, and I can usually indicate that at the beginning of each scene.
But I'm afraid it's going to get more complicated soon, especially if my Chinese characters find their subplot ... or the supernatural creatures (multiple nationalities) start gaining more prominence.
Anyway, this thread is useful, and I'll think about the suggestions here once the languages start getting complicated. So, thanks.

I think Ghost Dog Way of The Samarai did this very cleverly.

Yes, it was a movie, but one of the supporting cast of characters only spoke French. Instead of translating, they mentioned that the guy spoke only French and that the main character doesn't know French; then had the main character answer what he felt his friend was saying. So- you never get a direct translation, but you get what was being said by how the main character answered it. It was very clever and not the least bit annoying.

I don't know if it's a good example or not, but I recently read 'The old man and the sea' and you know, that one has some Spanish words and a load of fishermen phrases that were not explained in the book. I was kind of lucky though, since the book I had was published by "Reclam", a german publisher that explains words that are not in their own dicitionary at the bottom of each page in foot notes. (Funny enough, they explain the easiest words too. Their dicitionary doesn't seem to have a lot of words.) Without those foot notes, I would be oblivious to what that guy does on his boat most of the time.
Thing is, as a reader I won't understand a thing unless I knew it beforehand or if it is explained. Same thing with 'A clockwork orange': sure, some stuff is easy to figure out, some is explained in the text but for some I had to use a cheat sheet (English is not my native language, so every made-up slang word that sprung from an actually used slang word was almost impossible for me to figure out on my own.)

Meh. I can really only give my opinion from a reader kind of point of view since I'm not much of a writer. Lol.

I have a brief scene where a group of Irish men, on their way home from a Stag Night, get hawled into a Russian party in London. Naturally, being set in London, the Russians can speak English. But it is necessary for the 'host' to introduce his new friends to the other guests in Russian. My preference is to spell out the Russian greeting phonetically (I'll check this with a Russian friend) and, using Tex's "Chewbacca Directive" (see above), the meaning is inferred by the reaction of the other characters.

Perspective, perspective, perspective.

Are you writing in 3rd person omniscient or 1st person. If, in 3rd person limited, does the main character understand the language being spoken? All depends on perspective.

If you're writing in 1st person and the main character doesn't understand Latin or German or whatnot, that section should be in the language he/she doesn't understand. If they do, then you can choose to give the translated version as people have noted above.