Not Just for Polyglots! Why You Should Try Writing in a Foreign Language

Foreign language? … Say what?

Trust me, it’s not as crazy as it sounds, nor as far out of reach as you may think.

Let me make one thing clear, right from the beginning: you don’t need to speak like a native, or even have advanced foreign language skills. You simply need to know enough to string together coherent sentences. (And even that may not be completely necessary.)

Most of all, you need to love the language. If you don’t love it, writing stories and poetry with it will be a real chore — which is precisely what we don’t want. This is about exploration and play!

But before I get into the details of how it works, let me explain where I’m coming from …

In college, while studying comparative literature, I tried my hand at writing poetry in German, hoping it would improve my language skills.

The experiment turned out to be a lot of fun. I enjoyed the feel of the foreign words, their unique music, their different possibilities in sentence structure, and even their visual appearance.

Of course, the resulting poems weren’t winning any awards — but they had their own primitive charm and mysticism, probably owing the fact that I couldn’t fall back on my old poetic habits. I was forced to find alternate, unfamiliar ways of expressing myself … and it helped fire up my imagination again.

That’s why I think that if you know any foreign language, even just a little bit — elementary level counts! — you should experiment with some translingual creative writing.

Poems, stories, creative nonfiction … whatever strikes your fancy, you ought to at least give it a try.

Here’s why:

• You’ll break out of your typical writing habits. Since you’re trying to communicate in whatever way you know how, your mind has to take creative leaps and detours. That’s just what you need if you’re in a rut!
• You’ll discover more possibilities for how language can be used, since the foreign language probably doesn’t use the same patterns of sound or structure, and you’ll need to adjust. You may find that it turns around and influences your mother-tongue writing later.
• You’ll get excellent foreign language practice and improve your vocabulary recall. When you write creatively in a foreign language, you’re using language with purpose, emotion, and strong visual associations. This helps hammer the words into your memory. Plus, you begin to feel a sense of ownership of the words, and they become less foreign, more a part of you.

Awesome! So how do you do it?

Here are some ways you can get started:

• Write simple daily journals in the foreign language, to get used to the feel of it and to start making personal associations with the words.
• Speak or write prayers in your chosen language. This has a similar benefit to journaling, but I find that it comes from an even deeper place and leads to stronger associations.
• Do practice translations of your own or others’ works into a foreign language. Start small here, with short poems, and work your way up to longer or more complex works.
• Write poems directly in the foreign language, without stopping to translate. It’s unbeatable practice and can be really thrilling if you don’t stop to check a dictionary.
• Write short stories and personal essays when you feel confident enough for longer work.

Also, a note about using dictionaries …

I think it’s perfectly fine to look up a word you’ve never used before. BUT, you need to cross-check to make sure it’s the word you want. I recommend trying to use what you already know most of the time.

Finally, take comfort in the knowledge that there’s already a long tradition of writers working in languages other than their mother tongue. For example, Vladimir Nabokov (in English), Samuel Beckett (in French), Yoko Tawada (in German), and now Jhumpa Lahiri (in Italian).

It seems you’re in good company!

And just so you know I’m practicing what I preach, here are some short poems I wrote and translated in English, German, and Russian. (Notice how short they are!)

Listed in order of composition:

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So what do you think, guys? Are you going to attempt some multilingual creative work?