Italics, Audience, and Purpose in the North American and Indian proofs of Birds on the Brain
As an immigrant, first in the US and then in Canada, I have long found myself rebelling against the convention of italicizing the first occurrence of a foreign word in published text. Wasn’t English largely shaped by words imported from other languages? What does “foreign” mean, anyway? Is there a date-stamp on foreignness? Unfamiliar to whom? Italics seemed to be shouting out to the reader. They seemed to be saying things like this:
Hey! Look! This word’s not English!
What language is it anyway?
Check the back of the book. Is there a glossary?
How do you pronounce this?
In other words, stop reading. I decided to dispense with italics as markers of foreignness. I found that others who reflected on this matter agreed.
So did the editor of the North American edition of Birds on the Brain. We didn’t use italics for Indian language words. Instead, we placed them right in the text in the usual upright/Roman font. Example: After dinner, Daddy slices up sapota, which is my very favorite fruit.
See? No italics. Just regular, right-there-in-the-text, same-as-any-other-word font.
We reserved italics for thought, for quoted speech within dialogue, and for emphasis:
“That's the problem,” she says. “Everyone says Aha! That law is good. But what about people like me? Vendors who iron clothes for other people? What about us? Because of that law, we are now illegal.”
Illegal? It's a terrifying word.
We used them for titles of books:
…it’s titled Salim Mamoo and Me. I can’t wait to read it.
For signs:
Bird Count India! Do Your Bit!
And finally, for onomatopoeic sounds:
…the kreech-kreech of brakes…
I thought I had this down, a kind of personal style guide for the use of italics. Then we sold South Asian regional rights, and the editor at Duckbill/Penguin Random House India sent me proofs. And guess what? From the pages of the (English-language) Indian edition, all these italics leaped up at me, waving cheerily, in the first use of each Indian-language word:
After dinner, Daddy slices up sapota, which is my very favourite fruit. Its soft-brown sweetness makes my mouth happy.
What were those sloping letters telling me? Why did they want to call attention to those words rather than breathe them right into the text?
I took a breath. I went through the proofs, enjoying the ‘u’s inserted into the text. (Canadian publisher Groundwood follows American norms, because guess which market holds sway in this hemisphere?) Checking for other things, I let the italics simmer.
Slowly, slowly, it dawned on me. There are many languages in India, a mind-boggling number, in fact: as many as 122 identified major languages and 1,599 others. What does italicizing Indian words say to an Indian child reader? It doesn't say, “This is foreign.” Instead it might say:
Hey! Look! Indian word. How cool is that?
What language do you suppose that’s in? What is sapota called in your language?
Is this language like your own mother tongue? Or different?
Do you think these kids all speak the same Indian languages at home? How can you tell?
Those italics in the Indian edition invite conversation. They open up questions of belongingness, inclusion, and diversity. They bring the children in the story into the life of the reader, rather than setting them apart, as italics would do in the Canadian and American contexts. Remember Indians know a thing or two about making the foreign familiar—look what they’ve done with English!
Wow! Context is everything. Writing is all about audience and purpose. I knew that, yet I had to learn it all over again with these proofs. This was not so much a learning curve as a learning cliff. Reader, I fell right off. I’m still picking myself up.
