I'd suggest practicing some barely comprehensible scripts to hit the players with early on ( a guard, the ferry man, a trader), to give them a feel for the barrier. Something with a thick accent, odd grammar, a fair number of differing nouns, and plenty of strange idioms. It doesn't have to sound like "Tarshite," just give the players a feel for your view of the differences. Something to the effect of effect of (from a guard) "Who be you mob of of sharps and yobnows? Ist kindly you wanting to jaw-bob or more trollish your tastes?"
Then the locals talk more slowly, loudly, and (if the players are lucky) less idiomatically, until communication of a sort takes place.
After playing out one or two such encounters you can let the players say things like "I try ask directions to Two-Apple stead, going one bit at a time." and reply "After some back and forth you are pretty sure they understand what you want, and that you understand the directions." And most of the time you can just assume that they got it right, although once in a while you can send them to the local apple orchard instead.
For what it is worth, when travelling in Spain, speaking only English and French I usually got to where I was aiming for without much problem, but there was one occasion where I was *sure* I'd confirmed that I was on a through train from Grenada to Algecirras (sp?), when it turned out that I was supposed to have transfered at a fly-speck of a village called Bobidilla, and the train I was sitting on had turned around and was heading back to Grenada. Hitting the players with at least one similar total failure to communicate should help keep them paranoid the rest of the time.
Finally, if they speak trade talk and can find other speakers, communication (within its limits) should go more easily, since I think it varies much, much, less from country to country.
As for when rolls are called for, I'd agree that around -5 sounds right.
--Bryan
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