Zach Aaronson
Spring Semester 2011
“Translations”
Brian Friel’s “Translations” was first performed on September 23rd, 1980 at the Guildhall in Northern Ireland (UK). The performance was well received by audiences and critics alike for its eloquent social commentaries and comical personalities. With “Translations” Friel seeks to recreate the great spirited plays of Lady Gregorys, W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge for the modern audience. While the play is set during the 1800’s, its messages are universal, thus relevant for its presentation in the twenty first century. Friel addresses topics such as Irish-British relations, the use of language in cultures and the failures that often result when people attempt to communicate with each other. The protagonist is Owen and his transformation through the course of events serves to comment on language’s influence on greater social struggles is the most important aspect of the play.
The play begins with Manus teaching Sarah to speak. This is an immediate indicator that the play concerns itself with language. Manus is described as “in his late twenties/thirties…He is pale-faced, lightly built, intense and works as an unpaid assistant-a monitor- to his father” (256). Sarah is unable to speak and consequently results to speaking with her physical movements and grunts. Manus does get her to say “My name is…” eventually (Friel 257). The focus switches then to the main protagonist, Owen.
Owen is Manus’s brother and after six years of living in Dublin, he is returning to his home Ballybeg. His father, Hugh, is an alcoholic schoolmaster. He is with two other men, Captain Lancey and Lieutenant Yolland. The three are making a map of Ireland; Owens serves as a translator, translating Irish signs and places. This is a direct historical reference to the Ordnance Survey, which was a government initiative to create a map of Ireland in its entirety (Friel 552). His position as translator serves to assist in assimilating the Irish into English culture. For example, Yolland and Owen approach many of the local stores in Ballybeg. Owen states, “We are trying to denominate and at the same time describe that tiny area of soggy, rocky, sandy round where that little stream enters the sea, an area known locally as Bun na hAbhann…Burnfoot! What about Burnfoot” (Friel 279). In this aspect, Owen serves as to propagate Ballybeg through the use of controlling language.
Yolland, Owen’s partner, is conflicted about changing the names of these places. He feels that their jobs are serving to destroy the culturally significant Irish dialect. He has seen the beauty of Ireland and fears his work is serving to destroy it. Commenting about Ireland to Manus and Owen, Yolland says, “But certain tasks demand their own tempo. You cannot rename a whole country overnight. Your Irish air has made me bold” (Friel 279). His love affair with Ireland increases as Owen takes him around the town renaming landmarks.
Owen eventually introduces Yolland to Maire. Maire is a local who Manus is hoping to court. However, it is soon realized that Maire and Yolland have feelings for each other. They kiss onstage. Eventually Manus finds out about this affair and goes to defend his honor against Yolland. Despite his anger, he does not end up attacking Yolland. Again, language plays a key role in this relationship because Yolland only speaks English and Maire speaks only Irish.
The next night, Yolland goes missing. Manus fears that Yolland’s disappearance will indict him as the main suspect so he decides to flee town. It is not clear why Yolland suddenly left Ballybeg. It is aleluded that Yolland’s disappearance was either due to him being attacked or he became a full member of an Irish armed resistance. Maire is unable to accept Yolland’s disappearance even as British soldiers form a search party. The British are presented as very hostile and unsympathetic as they threaten to shoot the village’s livestock if Yolland were not returned: “If by then the lieutenant hasn’t been found, we will proceed until a complete clearance is made of this entire section” (Friel 302). It is because of this malicious treatment of the Irish civilians by the British soldiers that leads Owen to an epiphany: he too must join the Irish resistance.
Manus’s decision to leave town is an interesting point of conflict. Manus’s decision to leave is motivated by the new relationship between Yolland and Maire. He is heartbroken, but realizes that if the authorities ever found him, they would arrest him. This is yet another example of the British not making any effort into creating stable relations with the Irish. Ignorance is most associated with the British in this play because they quickly jump to judgment as to whether Yolland was murdered by Manus. Manus cannot trust that the British would not arrest him, though he had nothing to do with Yolland’s mysterious disappearance. Manus fears that if he were found, the British would take his heartbroken emotions as a sign of guilt for murdering Yolland. In thinking so, he does not believe that the British would show any empathy toward his situation even though heartbreak is a universal emotion.
According to the views of Yolland and Owen (after he joins the revolution), culture is dependent on its evocation through language. As they were going around Ballybeg renaming the landmarks, Yolland felt guilty for his actions. In act one, scene one, Yolland and Owen are getting drunk together. It is here that Yolland’s fascination with the Irish language is revealed. Yolland is trying to pronounce various Irish words and asking Owen if he said them correctly. Yolland states, “And bloody marvelous stuff it is, too! I love it! Bloody, bloody, bloody marvelous!” (291). As the play progresses Yolland’s love affair with the Irish language soon becomes replaced with anger toward the British for destroying that language. It is in this instance that Yolland actually contradicts himself. He sees language being a significant factor in establishing culture. However, his relationship with Maire exists, despite their lack of communication. Basically they communicate using their bodies since they do not share the same languages. Yet, their relationship clearly shows that language has no bearing on culture because they have these intimate feelings for each other without communicating.
The drunkard Hugh who is ironically one of the more logical and informative of the characters, comments on this notion. As Owen is gathering his things to leave, Hugh attempts to persuade him to stay stating, “Three thoughts occur to me: A- that is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language…B- we must never cease renewing those images; because once we do, we fossilize” (Friel 306). Here, Hugh is going against the notions that culture is dependent on preserving its language. Hugh believes that to be too caught up with the naming of things can hold communities back. By keeping the names the same, Hugh claims that the culture would “fossilize,” becoming irrelevant to modern times. Therefore, Hugh presents another argument claiming that language should not and does not influence culture. If one becomes too caught up in language and what things are referred to as, they stand to lose sight of the more important tenants of the culture itself.
The reliability of memory is also critical in understanding this culturally significant piece of art. Most of the commentary on memory comes toward the end of the play and is revealed through the character of Hugh. Hugh is the drunken father of Owen and Manus and owns a local tavern in Ballybeg. Hugh represents the older Irish generation, one who has lived his entire life in Ballybeg while the signs were still in Irish. Before Owen leaves to join the revolution, Hugh parts with him some dramatic words: “Take care, Owen. To remember everything is a form of madness” (Friel 307). Here, Hugh is explaining that to get caught up with language works to deteriorate the important features of Irish. In fact, Hugh is going as far to say that language is not vindictive of the cultural norms. Therefore, he sees the actions of the British soldiers not an affective attempt to culturally imperialize the Irish. Since memory is unreliable, lingering on it would not be beneficial since “to remember everything is a form of madness.” Cultures evolve and clearly Irish culture is being put in a position where it is forced to adapt to the changes that are taking place. Hugh calls for embracing these changes because hanging onto cultural norms can equally devastate the community as the name changes do. The refusal of the Irish to accept the new cultural norms blinds them from recognizing the true aspects of their culture, which is grounded in family relations. The act of Owen leaving Ballybeg Hugh deems as more harmful to his culture since he is abandoning the family structure in a desperate act to preserve what he feels is Irish culture.
Friel’s strength as a playwright derives from his ability to recreate an authentic Irish play, similar to those performed during the early twentieth century for a modern audience. “Translations” adheres to the thematic structures associated with Irish literature and embraces the dialect of the Irish people. This attempt to recreate the typical Irish play creates a tension that works against his prose. With “Translations,” Friel emphasizes the importance of language, but negates that its ever changing nature truly affects culture. However, Friel is clearly using language as a means of portraying the culture. The fact that the British pronounce Owen’s name incorrectly demonstrates that the two cultures are incapable with each other. This makes the ending seem ambiguous because Hugh’s final words to Owen urge him not to desert his hometown.
The works of Brain Friel and Lady Gregory, another Irish playwright, interlock comedy and a play on language in order to assert broader political themes. When she originally wrote “Spreading the News,” Lady Gregory intended the play to be tragic. She wrote, “The idea of this play first came to me as a tragedy. I kept seeing as in a picture people sitting by the roadside, and a girl passing to the market, gay and fearless. And then I saw her passing by the same place at evening, her head hanging, the heads of others turned from her…” (Friel 443). However, she eventually wrote her play as a comedy in order to reach a larger audience and to distance herself from “the high poetic work” of Yeats and Synge. This demonstrates her play as dependent on entertaining the audience, an ambitious goal met. One could argue that the embrace of comedy undermines her larger commentary. Despite this notion, her work is not weakened by her use of comedy in a similar fashion found with “The Rising of the Moon.” In fact, it enriches the text’s credibility with its ability to make history as entertaining as it is vital to understanding the events that led to how Irish culture was affected by British imperialism.
Friel takes a similar approach in binding comedic scenarios with pertinent social issues. Each of his characters are outrageous in their own right, yet each serves as a greater representation of the classes of Irish. He does so however at the expense of historical accuracy. Friel comments on his historical inaccuracies as being irrelevant to the play’s deeper significance in an essay he wrote concerning “Translations”: “Writing an historical play may bestow certain advantages but it also imposes particular responsibilities. The apparent advantages are the established historical facts…The concomitant responsibility is to acknowledge those facts or ideas, but not to defer to them. Drama is first a fiction, with the authority of fiction. You don’t go to “Macbeth” for history” (Friel 546). The actual person, Yolland, Friel attempts to portray did not join the survey department until 1838, despite the fact that the play takes place in 1833. However, “Translations” continues to be an informative artwork despite its historical inaccuracies. This is because the emotions associated with Irish-British relations and the clashes of cultural norms are universal. Along with Friel’s “Translations,” Lady Gregory’s “Spreading the News” also deals with themes of language and preserving culture. Both plays also end with ambiguous results, a common feature recognized in Irish literature.
“Translations” is a fantastic example of Irish drama. Though it is written many years after writers such as Yeats and Lady Gregory dominated the scene it remains an aesthetically and socially pleasant play. Arguably, Friel’s most important strength is his ability to recreate the revolutionary Irish play. He does at a time where Irish-British relations are at their best, yet is still able to make a play that is relevant and befitting for the younger generations. Friel also relies on character development as a key component to understanding the messages he puts forward. Though the messages are ambiguous in their argument, they still serve a purpose of revealing certain issues in society. The misconceptions of memory and language as an indicator of culture also work to strengthen the play’s messages. Language has always been a topic of much interest in the Irish. “Translations” reflects the often difficult opinions the Irish had of the British as they changed the names of their culturally affected places.
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