I'm writing a novel with bilingual characters who switch languages throughout the story. The story will be completely in English, though, so I've been using visual cues (like italics) to indicate a language switch. How can I indicate the language change for an audiobook? At times the language switches back and forth pretty quickly, so it feels awkward to comment on it every time. I don't want to use an accent to indicate the language change, since a listener might think they're just talking with an accent, or that a new person is speaking. I'm really stumped. Have you ever seen this done? Where? I have a number of blind friends, so it's important to me that my novel can be converted into an audiobook.
Have them say in that language and then have the narrator or another character repeat what they said in English or have it conveyed through context clues. "Mi gato es muy blanco." "Oh, can I see a picture of your white cat?" "No, no. Mi telefono esta roto." "Oh, maybe another time then." Truthfully, the only thing you actually need to translate or make clear to readers is plot critical information. Everything else you'll just have to have the readers figure out on their own.
Perhaps you could put the text in between slashes /like this?/ Most TTS software should be able to pick that up so that before every line that's being indicated in another language, TTS will read the slash and say it out loud for the listener. You'd just have to indicate that fact before the novel's start so that everyone knows what the slashes are supposed to mean.
The narrator says, "He spoke in Russian, 'Get this fool a warm grave.' Then he spoke in English, 'Don't worry Mr. Bond, my associates will take good care of you.'"
Yeah most novels I've read such as some by William Gibson or Tom Clancy manage this. They have a number of multi-lingual characters state that such and such character is speaking in X language. In an audio book it does simply say the line as written, "so and so says in X". Now if your audience is able to understand both you may just have an audio book with both languages.