What's the best way to indicate other languages when writing?

[Dhavaer]

What the title says, pretty much. What way of indicating the characters are speaking another language do you prefer? After some googling the best option I can see is to find some nice person who speaks the language in question (any Korean speakers in the audience?) and have the first line in that language with a translation after in in italics, and then have all subsequent dialogue directly in italics. The main downside is it means you can't use italics for emphasis, but I don't do that much anyway.
Any suggestions?

[Yora]

I think writing in italics or using <<french talky signs>> always works reasonably enough. Since italics is often used to represent thoughts or telepathy, you might have to use some other signs anyway.

[Serpentine]

I think writing in italics or using <<french talky signs>> always works reasonably enough. Since italics is often used to represent thoughts or telepathy, you might have to use some other signs anyway.

Funny, I've mostly seen <<>> for telepathy... though granted that's mostly in Animorphs.

Italics is the way I've seen most of the time, which seems to work reasonably well (for the emphasis bit, standard practice seems to be just to reverse it: unitalicise the words you want to emphasise).
Using a different font could also work, as could just starting or ending it with "...[person] said in [language]", although that could be annoying if you're changing languages a lot.

[LaughingGnoll]

Honestly, I like footnotes. You can write freely in the language of your choice (usually German in my case) and then send a footnote down to the bottom of the page for the translation. However, I don't have huge conversations written out in a foreign language if I can avoid it, so my footnotes don't grow out of control.

[Gnoman]

Honestly, the least intrusive method I've seen is to simply state that the character is speaking in Polish or German, then make a note when the language change. In such cases, it's usually a good idea to note when a verb form or similar is used in a way that can't be replicated in the book's actual language.

[Anarion]

Use of spacing can go pretty far as well, so noting that the characters are speaking in Korean and setting off the section in another language with an extra line space before and after could make it clear.

What medium is this going to be in? If it's physically printed, italics with normal font for emphasis is probably the most elegant solution.

Funny, I've mostly seen <<>> for telepathy... though granted that's mostly in Animorphs.

yeah, <<>> is always going to be thoughtspeak. I loved that series.

[kpenguin]

<<>> Can be thoughtspeak or other language to me depending on context. The latter usage is mostly used in comic book type things, as I recall. That's where I usually see it, at least.

[Ravens_cry]

ElfQuest used <> to indicate languages other than the elves language.
I guess it depends if you want other people to understand the language or not.
If you do, perhaps English with little sprinklings of the language in question could work.

[SgtCarnage92]

I've always liked the <> for indicating a foreign language, as long as you establish what that language is. Honestly, it depends what you're trying to communicate to the readers. If it's a language that the protagonist (or whatever character you're currently following) doesn't understand, indicate they're speaking a foreign language and use body language or tone of voice to convey emotionality. If you are conveying information the protagonist knows, the <> or italics are the best bet.

[GolemsVoice]

Yup, I think either italics or <> works fine, but I'd prefer <>, since, not having read Animorphs, I'd associate italics with internal monologue and such things.

If you have a large segment in a foreign language, such as a text from a book or a longer dialogue, you could also just state that they're speaking Korean at the beginning, and then just use English. I'd use special indicators only when you want to explicitely mark that this is not English, for example because there's three people in a room, and one doesn't speak Korean, so the reader knows what that man understands and what not.

[Gnoman]

Literal translations, as long as it's not too separated a language, can also work. Most languages have somewhat unique idioms and word orders, and that can give the necessary strangeness while still being intelligible. For example, in Spanish, one says "I have twenty years" while in English the normal form is "I'm twenty years old."