Link of the Week: John Chu’s “Stand Back! I’m Going To Quote Junot Díaz (Thinking about language)”

John Chu’s recent post over at The Booksmugglers is a must read.  He talks about the difficulty of including foreign language in works of fiction and has some truly interesting things to say on the subject.

An excerpt:

Whereas listeners might reasonably experience that orchestration both ways, readers either understand a foreign language or they don’t. However, like how the orchestration of the Carousel Waltz must be compelling in either instrumentation, a story that makes use of dialect or foreign language must be compelling either way. Non-fluent readers must never feel as though something is missing but fluent readers must never feel as though anything is extraneous. 

Go on.  Read the whole thing.