Comments on: Bilingual novels

by: RN

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 01:50:45 +0000

Little late to reply, but many Chicano authors mix Spanish and English without translating the two.

by: BG

Sat, 26 May 2007 02:16:40 +0000

@Podolsky & David: It was a while ago and it slipped my mind that it was in the Netherlands and I didn’t bother to look it up, but now that you mention it I remember it taking place there. I think they translated the Dutch to English and left the German. I remember a lot of it being during the Jewish holiday(s) they celebrated so I wonder if there could have been Yiddish as well. Thanks for the corrections.

by: Colm

Fri, 25 May 2007 20:10:52 +0000

On movies, perhaps the one I most remember for being multilingual was the European production L’Auberge Espagnole about ERASMUS students in Barcelona which had dialogue in French, Spanish, Catalan, English, Danish and German.

by: James K

Fri, 25 May 2007 14:47:06 +0000

Following on Miro’s comments about multi-lingual film, one of my favorites is a little gem called Cuckoo (from 2002). It basically has three characters, two soldiers — one Finnish, another Russian — and a Sami woman. None of the them can speak the others’ languages, but they speak AT one another, making their own interpretations. The audience gets the subtitles, so are able to follow what each actor is saying — unlike the characters!

This would be difficult at best to translate into print.

by: James

Fri, 25 May 2007 12:46:28 +0000

It´s interesting how the sociolinguistic aspect is what allows these novels to work. I am looking forward to the Spanish-Enlgish ones when i finally allow myself to read another novel in English (next Jan when I am in the states I will read a few I think)

by: David

Fri, 25 May 2007 11:31:42 +0000

@Podolsky & BG, the Diary did include some phrases of German, including “…du spatst schon…” and Donnerwetter-noch-einmal, amongst other phrases, and yes the diary was originally in Dutch, like Podolsky said.

by: Joseph Staleknight

Fri, 25 May 2007 11:06:50 +0000

I know that the TC Boyle novel ‘The Tortilla Curtain’ has passages in Spanish, since it talks about the problem of illegal immigration in the southern US.

by: Podolsky

Fri, 25 May 2007 06:42:57 +0000

“The Diary of Anne Frank” was written in Dutch, not German.
There are quite a few Yiddish folk songs which include passages in Ukrainian without translation, since Jews in the Ukraine understood the language.

by: Miro

Fri, 25 May 2007 06:16:54 +0000

Many Slovak and Czech novels use the other language in dialogues in its original form. This originates from the times of the Czechoslovak federation (1918-92), when both languages were used in the medias and everybody was used to listen/read to them.

Not a book, but a film: there is one Polish film from 1970 called “Jak rozpietalem druga wojne swiatowa” (How I unleashed the World War II), a story of a Polish soldier traveling across the Europe and Northern Africa during the war. There are people speaking Polish, German, Croatian, Greek, Arabian, French, English and Italian (although almost all with a slight Polish accent). No subtitles, no dubbing, great fun.

by: bunnygirl

Fri, 25 May 2007 03:28:02 +0000

The books of Rolando Hinojosa are in a “border” genre, written in a mix of English and Spanish, as spoken on the Texas/Mexico border. Check out “Mi Querido Rafa,” if you’re interested.