Lost in Translation

Mutti, can you please make Pfannkuchen for dinner? Pretty please?

Of course, Liebling.  Would you like them with Zucker for dessert or with ham und Käse for the main course?

Setting a book for English readers in a non-English-speaking environment creates an interesting  problem.  Many writers solve it along the lines of the exchange I made up above — tossing in some relatively easy-to-figure-out foreign words so readers are aware that the characters are speaking German not English.  Here the c...