The Art of Conveying Language in Carving Legacies

While I am not multi-lingual myself, it has always fascinated me with how different racial languages impact character interactions within a fantasy world. Unfortunately, there have been very few games or stories I’ve encountered where they really dig deep into the intricacies of how not knowing more than one language can create obstacles for the protagonist(s) as they work toward their end-game goal. Keep in mind, I’ve not read every fantasy series out there, so ​if you’ve come

across some then leave a comment below with those titles.  
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In writing the Carving Legacies series, I really wanted to dive into languages acting as barriers for characters. The obstacle I had to overcome was figuring out how I was going to communicate the change-over between Adami to Vat'tu, or to Drakish, etc. 
 
Here were the options I was seeing:

1. Write it in the actual language. This is probably the most commonly used, but was an immediate ‘no’ for me on several fronts. First, I’m bad at linguistics and I can barely learn a second actual language let alone make up my own and memorize it. Second, the books contain full conversations back and forth between characters that would require additional pages of translations for the reader. Third, the reader needs to understand what’s being said by these characters at all times, so hiding it behind made-up words just creates unnecessary work for the reader. 
2. Explain in narration. Better, but still not perfect. There were times in Key of Arcandus where lines would swap back and forth between the Adami common tongue and Vat'tu at Zikky’s whim, or when the team in The Hive where many characters are engaging in conversation between Adami, Drakish, and Vat'tu. Constantly narrating “said in Adami” or “said in Drakish” makes it hard for the reader to pick up on certain sentences that are being purposely obfuscated by a character from other individuals. 
3. Visually show a language change. Stylize the text in a way that indicates to the reader that this sentence isn’t following the default language that the characters are universally engaged in. Probably the best idea of the bunch, but what happens when more than two languages are being swapped between one another?

 
At the end of the day, I combined the second and third options together. With the Adami common tongue as the ‘base language’ in default text for the dialogue, I chose italics as the visual indicator that the language has swapped. Then I would supplement the initial swap with a single narration prompt of to what language the narration changed. From there, it sets up the framework in that particular conversation of which languages are involved, and which specific language the visual prompt is reflecting. 
 
“But what happens when you need to emphasize something?” I hear you ask. Great question!
 
Using italics as a language change now removes it as a tool for emphasis on dialogue, otherwise it creates mass confusion. I found it to be an acceptable exchange because emphasis abuse has the potential of running rampant (bad thing). Meanwhile, using it for language changes makes sense, and is part of the story, thus removing any notion of abuse (good thing). Plus, I needed the language swaps way more than I needed word emphasis in my dialogue.
 
“That’s fine, but what if you absolutely needed to add emphasis to something?” I hear you ask next. Don’t worry, I’ve got that covered.
 
Instead of italics, I decided to use capitalization to impact words in its stead. After all, if we’re going to use emphasis for something, we better have a good reason. Unlike italics, capitals are obnoxious as f%@k, which makes it overwhelming to the eyes when you abuse them. Ultimately, I found that when I took the easy-emphasis tool away, I trained myself to find alternative ways to narrate stronger sentiments in dialogue, or avoid them all together. Saving the capitalizations for single-word shouting in only a couple of key places. 
 
“Okay, but what about a character’s inner dialogue?”
 
Yeah, this one was the trickiest of all, but this is where the First-Person Limited PoV swooped in to save the day. I originally wrote Key of Arcandus in Third-Person Omniscient. But the editor I hired said that the TPO PoV was going out of style, and [insert conversation here about trends I tuned out]. Ultimately, they wanted me to switch to First Person and only from the protagonist’s PoV, which I would not do because in later books this PoV choice would become a serious hinderance on a meta scale. I also don’t write to chase trends because those are fleeting.
 
As a compromise, I went with FPL as my PoV, which can bypass the inner thoughts of a character. Instead of writing out the mental dialogue, I either narrated out the most logically assumed perspective for the character, or I cut it out entirely and had the character emote their feelings via facial expressions. 
 
There you have it! 
 
What are your favorite ways that authors have tackled and integrated language barriers into their stories? Comment below to discuss!