My Love-hate Relationship with Wattpad

Book Language

Have you ever been smitten by the summary of a book, only to enter its first page and realize that just 35% of the chapter's content is written in English, with the remaining 65% in a non-speaking English language?

Preferably, in Tagalog? 

Don't worry, I've also been there before, and I know how that feels.

Many of these books that usually fall under this category are mostly written by Filipino writers with a small percentage coming from the Indian community. 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to write the synopsis or summary of your book in either English, a Non-English language or even both. I mean you're the writer so you make the decisions.

BUT, there's definitely something wrong with you pulling English readers into your circle with a well written and enticing English summary, only for them to feel cheated. What do I mean by feeling cheated? You start reading the book, only to realize that a small portion is in English whilst a greater portion is in another language.

Tell me, how do you expect someone like me or the others to enjoy and understand what the characters are saying or what the plot of the book is even about?

If anyone wants to know how it feels like to be caught in such a situation, it feels like getting Scammed.

All writers should know the audience they're targeting with their language. Blending two languages with the hopes of getting a larger reader base is a very wrong irrelevant move.

Imagine being invited to a Halloween party through an email. You're told the kind of costume to wear and the theme of the party. You're filled with excitement and can't wait for the day of the event to arrive. On the day of the party, you drive to the host's house in your spooky outfit with a big goofy smile on your face. Upon entering the house, you're suddenly taken aback by the decorations of the inside of the house. It feels like a slap on your face. You realize that this party is actually a blend of a Christmas and a Halloween party. You end up confused after seeing some people dressed as Santa Claus and elves whilst the others are dressed up as Frankenstein and whatnot.

What the hell is going on here, you ask? You're confused, I know.

That's how I feel whenever I encounter such books too.

Many English readers on this app who can neither speak nor read Spanish, Urdu, French, Tagalog etc would never go scouting for such books, and the reason is quite simple. These readers don't understand the language and would not waste their time reading the content of a book they can't comprehend, so being scammed like that, hurts sometimes.

Let's take the page of one of my favourite authors on this site, Ariana Godoy. She's a Spanish author but speaks and writes English as well. She actually has many different books written in Spanish and English. Her summaries always gives you a hint of what language the book is written in. If it's a Spanish book, you would find the synopsis written in Spanish, the same applies to her English book.

I've never come across a work of the author that's written in part English and part Spanish. As a reader, this tells me that the author knows the kind of audience she's targeting and she knows how to cater for them.

Imagine her having a book in part Spanish and part English, how are the Spanish readers expected to understand the English side of the book? Similarly, how are the English readers expected to understand the Spanish side of her work? At the end of the day, everyone is left confused and unsatisfied.

I'm not writing this to deter upcoming authors from choosing this technique, however, if you insist on going by this technique, then please don't have the word count of your synopsis in ONLY English. It should be in English and the other language so that you don't end up annoying and wasting the time of some people.

Question: Have you ever been caught up in a similar situation before?