Translations

by Brian Friel

Some discussions of key ideas

We can think about the idea or concept of translation in a literal sense, but also in a metaphorical
sense.

I shall be pursuing the concept of translation in two ways:

a. Negative light translation as a way of exercising power.

b. Positive light translation as a way of resisting power.

Youll notice that the relationship between translation and power will be important.

1. The concept of translation

a. Words come out of a head not out of a hat. Writers take great care not only over what
words they use, but also the order in which they commit them to paper. Nothing is
accidental.

b. The title of a literary work is fundamentally important to its meaning. Titles are not
neutral, easily readable badges which texts wear, like the name-badges worn by
people at McDonalds. Titles set up all sorts of expectations about a text, and they can
often give us a clue to how we should read the text, what we should be looking for.
Why is it that in Othello, for example, the play is named after that man? How would it
be changed if it had been called Iago? Othello is at the heart of the tragedy: he suffers
a personal downfall in the same way that Macbeth, Lear and Hamlet have been said to.
In the play bearing his name, Othello does not even appear until the third scene.

Bearing both things in mind, lets look at the title

There are many different kinds of translation here.

To get a measure of the different kinds of translation, we need to get a definition of it. In doing this,
we will gather some resources which are going to help us read this play:

a. Standard definition concerns the journey from one language to another: OED express
the sense of a word in or into another language; in or to another form of
representation: transliteration.

b. Translation as more figurative, more general; as a metaphor: OED move from one
person, place, or condition to another.

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What can we surmise from these definitions?

a. The translation is about language, but can also be about persons, places and
conditions. It is not just language which can be translated, but other things too.

b. Translation is about movement, motion, things on the move and changing.

c. I would also argue that translation is about crossing borders, moving something from
one condition, or position, across a border to another position. The theme of borders,
and of crossing them, is also central to translation and as I will argue to this play.

These different if related notions of translation are part of the different translations which
characterise Friels play.

Okay. To recap. We have defined translation, and have gained a more general sense of it as a
metaphor, a concept, a theme which is not just confined to the issue of language. With that in
mind, let us move to the play and proceed to pursue the negative and positive areas which I
mentioned at the begin. Translation is central to each.

2. The play

2a. Translation and power

Most people who write about the theme of translation in Friels play confine themselves to the issue
of language. This is an important aspect of the play, certainly, and we need to look at it, but it is
not the only kind of translation in the text.

Translations, as you know, is set in nineteenth-century Ireland and concerns an British survey of
the country in which Irish place names are replaced with English ones. The relationship between
Britain and Ireland at this time can be called a colonial one that is to say, the Irish are ruled by a
foreign country who assume the right to rule Ireland, to dictate what is and is not acceptable
behaviour, and how the Irish should speak and act.

In thinking about colonialism (a key term), about the ruling of one country by another, we usually
think about guns and weapons, about military aggression, slavery and imprisonment. However,
Friels Translations shows that one of the most devastating ways in which you rule somebody,
have power over them, is not by pointing a gun at their heads but by controlling the language that
they speak.

Language is something which is central to our sense of identity (names and name calling). Think
about Sarah: Manus could be encouraging her to say anything, but what they are concentrating on
is Sarahs struggle to enunciate her own name, to say for herself who she is.

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Language is also bound up with values. The meanings we attach to things tell us which values we
consider are important, and how we learn or choose to differentiate between superior or inferior
qualities. Listen to Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiongo on this point:

Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature [oral stories]
and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and
our place in the world. [...] Language is thus inseparable from ourselves as a
community of human beings with a specific form and character, a specific history, a
specific relationship to the world.

Decolonising the Mind copyright Ngugi wa Thiongo (Heinemann, 1986) (p. 16)

As Ngugi stresses, language does not just passively reflect reality; it also goes a long way towards
creating a persons understanding of their world, and it houses the values by which we (either
willingly or through force) live our lives.

So, to take a peoples language away, as Lancey and Yolland attempt to do is to do two things:

a. To replace the language the names, the values of the Irish with British values. The
new English names in Translations are thought up to make the place intelligible for the
British, and not for the Irish. To re-name something is to seize power over it, to own it,
to make it belong to you.

b. Translation also denies the Irish the chance to name the world for themselves; it
removes their version of the world and instead asks/makes them belong to somebody
elses version of the world. (Again, back to Sarah, the importance of having the power
to name yourself and the world youre in also Owen/Rowland. The other thing that
the play starts with is a christening, where people choose names. Note the contrast
that Friel subtly suggests between two kinds of name selection. On one hand, there is
the freedom, and humour that surrounds that choice of name in the christening: Bridget
says: Our Seamus says she was threatening she was going to call it after its father.
On the other there is the crude and rude imposition of names on things that are already
named. Yolland agrees that Burnfoot is a good translation of Bun na hAbhann and is
busy checking how to spell it that he doesnt hear Owens complaint: George, my
name isnt .)

So, at a literal level, Translations is about the power of language. It matters what language you
use. Language cannot be separated from wider historical issues of power and belonging. The
play shows that literal translation is never a neutral thing language and power are inseparable,
and translation shows how language can be used as a tool of aggression and dispossession.

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2b. More positive translations

Let us move on a little and think more about translation in a more metaphorical, literal sense. I
said before that crossing borders was central to the notion of translation. It is worth while
considering just how many of the characters in this play can be thought of as crossing borders,
struggling to break out of one condition and into another. Ill just mention a few, but try to think
about all the characters in this way.

a. Sarah attempts to cross the border between silence and speech.

b. Jimmy Jack his quotations from classical antiquity cross between rural Ireland and
the ancient world of Greece and Rome. He brings these old knowledges across time
and space, into a hedge-school in nineteenth century Ireland.

c. Owen Hes crossed from rural Baile Beag/Ballybeg to the metropolitan city of Dublin,
and back again.

d. Yolland He was originally heading for India but missed the boat and has crossed from
Britain to Ireland.

e. Then theres Maire Keen to learn English, to cross a linguistic divide and
communicate with the newly arrived British men. Note that she also encourages
Manus to think about applying for a new job and getting out of the hedge school.

So, the play shows that there is variety in both the British and Irish camps. People do not sit easily
in one place but either move about, or dream of moving about. They are endlessly crossing
borders. In these terms, the movement and crossing so central to the theme of translation are
represented as part of the potential of the characters, both British and Irish which transcends
nationality. Nobody occupies the same place, and so many (with the exception of Manus, who Ill
get to) are keen to move between different places (both real places and places of the imagination).

So, if the issue of the translation of the Irish language into English reveals translation to be a
sinister process in the play, then it also represents translation in a much more positive light.
Translation threatens borders it reveals them to be porous, things get through translation
holds forth the possibility of change.

This positive sense of translation, that which promises movement and change, is in direct conflict
with the negative sense of translation which the British are using to tighten their hold over the Irish.
Think about it. Colonialism is all about placing borders between people, separating people out into
categories such as British and Irish, denying them their individuality, putting them in their place
and denying them the right to move, to cross. For example: youll remember that Lancey treats
Owen in quite a friendly manner in the middle of the play; but once Yolland goes missing, Lancey

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treats Owen in a perfunctory manner do your job, translate in that last scene he puts Owen
back in his place.

Friels play is radically against this laying of these colonial borders, this grouping of individuals into
groups called British and Irish which admits no traffic or crossing between them. The play shows
that this is a futile and dangerous action.

So how does he go about finding a route out or across, a way of fighting the placing of borders
between groups and individuals which is a consequence of British colonialism?

First of all, the answer is NOT the killing of the British by the Irish. Translations is not a nationalist
play; it does not applaud acts of armed resistance against the British as the answer to Irelands
disempowerment. In attacking the British troops, the Irish forces in the play fall foul of the same
divisive logic of the British the laying of borders, the denial of individuality. (Note that, in the final
act, the Irish subversives are called the Donnelly twins. Individuality is impossible under
nationalism). The victims in this kind of us against them battles are Maire and Yolland, and its
with them that I want to look at next.

One of the best parts of Translations is in II.ii, when Maire and Yolland are lovestruck and
desperately trying to communicate. They may not understand what each other is saying, but they
are communicating and connecting crossing if you like across the divides of language, of
nation, of gender. Think about Maires first words in this scene: Oh my God, that leap across
the ditch nearly killed me. Leap, ditch, having to jump over something to effect change, to find a
new way of living. (Contrast to Manus here.)

But that leaping is dangerous. It threatens the borders. A couple of days later Yolland has been
killed by the Irish and Maire is back in the hedge school, waiting for his return, desperate to
escape, but like the pathetic figure of Manus she is stuck in the same old spot, again. I set out
for somewhere she says right at the end of the play, but I couldnt remember where. So I
came back here.

Translation, crossing, may offer ways out of colonial conflict, of hatred and division via love and
crossing but it remains a dangerous act, likely to be resisted by those who would divide us into
groups, put borders between us.

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3. Conclusion So what kind of play have we got then?

It might seem that, in the light of my lecture, Translations in a rather depressing play. It explores
the potential love of Maire and Yolland only to expose how short lived it was, how easily it was
vanquished by the forces of division and hatred. The play ends with the fields burning, the British
soldiers on the warparth, the smell of the coming potato famine in the air, and the death of the Irish
language. The final moments depict two old men, drunk on too much alcohol and classical
literature. Has negative translation won the day?

Maybe. But perhaps there is also a more positive way of reading the play, one which embraces
the more postive translation we have been thinking about. To understand this, we need to think
about the relationship between the moment when the play is set, the 1830s, and the moment when
the play is written by Brian Friel, in the 1980s.

Brian Friel, lives in the North of Ireland but comes from a Catholic family. He is writing his play at a
time of troubles. But, as I have argued, he is not a man who agrees in taking sides (English v Irish,
Protestant v Catholic). Instead, he wants to questions the idea of sides, of being divided. Friel is
writing at a time of conflict, and we could argue that he is trying in his play to find a way beyond, a
way forward, across age-old divisions, into a new future where old conflicts no longer exist.

Now, with that in mind, look at these moments from Hughs speech right at the end: Complex stuff,
this.

HUGH:
I look at James and three thoughts occur to me: A that it is not the literal past, the
facts of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.
B we must never stop renewing those images; because once we do, we fossilize.

What is Hugh saying?

a. That Ireland inherits certain images of history (language) which determine what
happens in the present past pictures which shape present behaviour.

b. That these pictures of the past must not be frozen, static but must be changed. In
looking again at the past, from a different angle, or in a new light, we open the
possibility to change life in the present.

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Lets think about this in terms of Friel. In the Troubles, when either Irish protestants or Catholics
look to the past they tend to see frozen pictures, set in stone, of either Unionist atrocities or
Catholics atrocities. But when Friel looks back to the past, he sees amongst the death and
dispossession, a love story. That image of love of the possibility of crossing between camps
can be brought back from the past and used to shape the present. Maire and Yollands love may
have perished in the past, but maybe its example can be used in the present as a way of urging
people to change their behaviour, to move beyond the past and into a new future where divisions
and opposing camps can no longer be firmly held.

In other words, the past of 1830 can be translated, moved across, to the present, and offer a
lesson which people can use to reshape their lives. Otherwise, as Hugh says, they (we) remain
fossilized, trapped in the same old conflicts, fighting the same old battles trapped in the past, as it
were. Friels play says to its Irish audience: dont forget your history, but dont get hung up on it.
We must use our past to change our present and future, rather than history, our past, to trap us in
the past.

So, Friel refuses to take sides in the Irish conflict, and instead offers hope for the future by finding
hope (and not just death and atrocity) in the past. In this way, Translations makes a contribution to
contemporary debates between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. This is perhaps the main
positive message of Translations. Yolland may die, but the love between Maire and Yolland has
not been defeated. It remains to promise the dangers but possibilities of daring to leap across the
ditch, just as M and Y leapt across the ditch in Act II scene II.

Translations copyright Brian Friel (Faber and Faber Ltd, 1981)

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