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Regarded by many as Brian Friel's theatrical masterpiece, Seamus Deane described Translations as a sequence of events in history which are transformed by his writing into a parable of events in the present day (Introduction 22). The play is in many respects an intelligent and enlightening metaphor for the situation in Northern Ireland. The aims of raising cultural awareness and dispelling socio-political apathy in the North were central to the objectives of the field day group. However, despite Friel's concerns with contemporary Ireland, the play is also an enchanting fictive account of the Irish experience of British colonialism. My aim in this page is to firmly place Translations within its historical context, in order to understand the representation of colonialism in the play and to facilitate further post-colonial readings. The action of the play occurs over a number of days towards the end of August 1833.
Before delving into the play it is clear, from these most general of points, that the mise-en-scene of Translations is a period of great significance in the colonial relationship between Ireland and England. The lifetime of Hugh and Jimmy Jack, the sixty years or so running up to 1833, bore witness to many important events in the metamorphosis of Ireland from a rural Gaelic society to a modern colonial nation. To go back another seven decades, in 1704 penal laws were enacted which decreed that a Catholic could not hold any office of state, nor stand for Parliament, vote, join the army or navy, practice at the bar nor... buy land (See Ireland: A History 54). Thus, by 1778 a mere five per cent of the land of Ireland was owned by Catholics. The Irish people (most notably Catholics, though Protestants also) such as those portrayed in Translations suffered severe discrimination, poverty and hardship.
The French Revolution of 1789 jolted Irish political thinking into a new framework. Events in France, and later in America, coupled with grievances against British Imperialist powers inspired thoughts of an Irish Republic and a rebellion. This culminated in the Rebellion of 1798, lead by Wolfe Tone and the Society of United Irishmen, in which Hugh and Jimmy participated: The road to Sligo. A spring morning 1798. Going into battle (445). But, as these characters soon discovered, the rebellion failed resulting in large executions and the passing of the Act of Union in 1800.
This piece of legislation, effective from 1 January 1801, brought Ireland under the direct rule of the British Crown. 1823 saw the rise of Daniel OConnell, a disillusioned veteran of 1798 who founded the Catholic Association. OConnell campaigned for better civil rights and social conditions for the Irish people; hence Maire reporting that he said, We should all be learning to speak English (399). OConnell believed that it was necessary to use the English language in order to allow Ireland to progress in a quickly modernizing Western world. In 1829, due to his efforts in Parliament, the Catholic Emancipation Act came into force overturning the penal laws. It was at this juncture, when the play takes place, that Britain began to make deeper inroads to Irish society and culture.
An attempt to colonies the mind and the people as opposed to conquering land through brute force. Translations is Friel's vehicle for representing methods central to the colonial discourse of Imperialist aspirations. In the foreground of the play the audience is presented with the British Ordnance Survey of Ireland, a process of mapping, renaming and anglicizing Ireland. Running beneath the surface Friel portrays the clash between languages, and the use of education as a method of resolving the cultural and unequal relationship between colonized and colonizer A framework imposed from above was the National Education system and the use of the English language.
In 1831 Chief Secretary Stanley introduced a system of National Education in Ireland where English was the sole medium of instruction. This was an institutional construction severely at odds to the hedge school of the opening scene. The notion of such a place, where the pupils are required to attend by law, and shall be forced to speak in English, bewilders Jimmy, Bridget and Dealt. And every child from every house has to go all day every day, summer or winter. Thats the law.
And from the very first day you go, youll not hear one word of Irish spoken. Youll be taught to speak English and every subject will be taught through English Maire's desire, at the opening of the play, to speak English shall soon be enforced by law throughout the National Schools in Ireland. Where Dan OConnell and Maire both assumed the use of English would allow progress towards their respective national and personal dreams, Hugh believes that English was simply for commerce but that it couldnt really express us (the Irish) (418). He realized that the use of Gaelic, of remaining true to their own traditions was a method of resisting colonialism, our only method of replying to...
inevitabilities Translations is a gripping and challenging drama which both uses and explores the richness of language and history to achieve its ends. Hedge Schools were underground throughout the eighteenth century. Their name came from the fact that that literally was where most of the classes took place at that time. In 1782 the Crown allowed a measure of legal status to the operation of these schools, but they were still based in barns and sod houses. As the play begins, ODonnells school has already lost at least two of its pupils to brewing political unrest as British troops and engineers have begun to conduct an ordinance survey intended to map the landscape for military intelligence and standardize the Gaelic place names in the Kings English. Just before the National School system was introduced in Ireland (1831), it has been estimated that some half-million Irish children received their education in hedge-schools.
Some of these schools had continued teaching entirely through Gaelic, and were excellent at teaching the classics. Yet, most of them reflected the growing awareness among the Irish of English as the language of opportunity. The language of the Grattan Parliament (1782 - 1800) was English; the language used in the United Irishmen's 1798 revolution was English; and, after the Act of Union (1800), English became the dominant language of politics, trade, commerce and law. It was, of course, also the language of emigration! Irish, by contrast, became associated with backwardness, was widely perceived as the language of the dispossessed. Daniel O'Connell, the Irish leader of the Repeal (of Union) and Catholic Emancipation movements, although he an Irish-speaker, was fiercely opposed to the preservation of Irish: ...
Although the Irish language is connected with many recollections which twine round the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue as a medium of all modern communication is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual disuse of Irish. "The old language, " he is quoted in Translations, "is a barrier to modern progress. " Personal and political conflicts are intertwined at the deepest levels as the action begins to unfold. Characters are faced with questions about themselves in which the very words they speak are central to understanding from where they have come and to where they are going. Tales from Ovid and Homer recited in class blend with Irish history, and the translation of placename's is explicitly related to a transformation of the landscape itself. This trauma will affect these people on more levels than one, and though by the close of the action the story has not been resolved, the audience is made painfully aware of the threads of change which have begun to unravel the lines of communication between peoples, countries, and language. Translations is a profound warning against the loss of the capacity to communicate. This both bears meaning for the situation when the play was written, and also for the political process now going on.
As Friel once remarked: "The only merit in looking back is to understand, how you are and where you are at this moment. " Worked Cite: Christopher Murray, " Brian Friel's Making History and the Problem of Historical Accuracy, " Lernout, Geert, ed. "The Crows Behind the Plough: History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Poetry and Drama (Rodophi: Amsterdam, 1991) Katharine Worth, "Translations of History: Story-telling in Brian Friel's Theatre" web web web web
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