Most writers – of fiction, at least – occasionally set their novels or stories in exotic places: if you’ve ever sat by a rain-spattered window, gazing out at a leaden English summer sky, and then dragged your eyes back to an empty grey screen, you’ll understand why. The allure of transporting your characters (with you tagging along for the ride) to somewhere warm, where the only umbrellas are poking out of long cold drinks, is obvious. The only problem is that the setting you’ve chosen to drop your characters into will be peopled with other characters – and most of them are foreign.
So how do you convey their ‘foreignness’ when they’re talking? Without either mekking zem oll speek lak Inspecteur Clouseau or else littering your work with so many foreign phrases that your reader loses the will to live? C’est un probleme, n’est-ce pas, mes amis? But there are ways around it…