One of my characters is living in Peru during part of the story, kind of in a Peace Corps type thing. Some of my dialogue is in Spanish. (It helps that I took a lot of Spanish in high school and college.) Those words count, right?
I looked in the rules forum, but couldn't find anything about this.
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Snowbaby
6 time-NaNo winner: 2002, '04, '05, '06, '07 and '08.
"What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within us out into the world, miracles happen" - Emerson
50,014 / 50,000
Nov 6, 2009 - 16 01
Yes! They count. You can write the whole novel in Spanish, if you like.
The info. was kind of hidden in the FAQ:
Can I participate if I'm not American? Are non-English novels okay?
You bet! We are very proud to be an international event, and don't consider the "National" in the title to refer to the United States. This is an event for all nations. We'd change the name to "International Novel Writing Month," but InNoWriMo doesn't roll off the tongue in quite the same way.
You can write novels in any language you like. Our validator doesn't handle non-Latin characters sets, sadly, so there may be an issue with becoming an official winner. But this is just icing on the NaNoWriMo cake, and we encourage you to write in whatever language is most comfortable for you.
----------ML Captain of Capital Ideas & Austin, TX Municipal Liaison
34,004 / 50,000
Nov 7, 2009 - 00 22
I've got a whole chapter written in binary from the perspective of my robot character. :) Each letter uses up the space of a word! Padding? You betcha!
Nicole
120,120 / 50,000
Nov 7, 2009 - 21 08
I'll add a quick comment to this. If you are at all concerned about any character issues causing a problem for the validator, just do this when the time comes:
1. Save a copy of your novel as "validation copy" or something like that.
2. Do a find and replace for any foreign/ non-Latin characters in that "validation copy," one at a time, and change them to anything Latin.
3. Upload that copy to be counted.
Voila! Instant end to problems with the validator :) It might be a hassle if the entire novel is written in, say, Hindi, but for short passages in Spanish, or with a stray character or three here and there? Nothing to worry about.
----------" ... but what the hell, I'm not Salinger or Pynchon. I can't be. I'm here."
-- Guy Gavriel Kay