35 pages • 1 hour read
Brian FrielTranslations
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1981A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Names
Names assume a symbolic significance in Translations, illustrating the connection between language and identity. It is no accident that the log of location names compiled by Owen and Yolland is referred to as the Name Book, a title which bespeaks the very personal nature of the Irish-to-English translations within it. While Yolland and Owen initially diverge over the value of paying homage to Irish history in these names (as in their debate over the long-forgotten story of Tobair Vree), Owen recognizes the importance of these names when Baile Beag is threatened by Yolland’s disappearance (53). Captain Lancey arrives at the schoolhouse and tellingly threatens the villagers by reading a list of locations that will be evicted and burned if Yolland is not found, giving a new kind of gravity to this list of new names. As Lancey reads the anglicized place names, Owen translates them back to the old Irish in a kind of elegiac tribute (80).
Sarah’s name is another motif through which Friel illuminates the personal power of language. In Act I, Sarah’s successful pronunciation of her name—with the help of Manus—represents different kinds of hope for both of them (for Manus, Sarah’s name is an affirmation of the worldly communication power afforded by speech; for Sarah, the ability to speak is inextricable from her desire to be noticed by Manus). As Manus optimistically proclaims: “Soon you’ll be telling me all the secrets that have been in that head of yours all these years” (3). By Act III, however, Sarah’s articulation of her name affords no hope to her or Manus, and when the soldiers arrive and demand to know who she is, she finds herself (again) unable to speak her name. While it would be easy to read this moment as a kind of defeat, Friel offers a glimmer of hopeful possibility: Sarah smiles and shakes her head as though to say she is guarding her “secrets,” just as the old Irish names guard their hermitic histories (83). For Sarah, dumbness may be a personal speech act, a refusal to share her identity with the British.
Hugh, on the other hand, seems to feel that some degree of exchange is necessary to preserving the Irish identity in an age of change and progress. Holding up the Name Book, he declares that the villagers “must learn those new names” (88).
Maps
Both literal and figurative maps appear throughout Translations, speaking both to the idea of immigration (wherein a map’s images and language guide one through a new space) and to the idea of home (wherein a map’s language and images guide one back to a familiar space). In Act I, Maire sits in the schoolhouse and looks over a map of America, wondering over the strange English names and terrain. This map corresponds with the map of England Yolland shows her, pointing to locations and outlining another potential home. The Irish maps created (and translated) between Owen and Yolland gesture both to Owen’s complicated sense of home (as someone who has now lived for years outside of his hometown) and to Yolland’s romantic sense of possibility as he longs to make his own home in Ireland. Finally, with their extensive geographic mapping of territories (and the history of those territories), the Latin texts of the Agricola, the Tristia Ex Ponto, and the Aeneid speak to Hugh and Jimmy Jack’s unique sense of home, whereby the experience of the Irish is aligned with the experience of those in “the warm Mediterranean” (50).
Latin Epics
In addition to mapping the Mediterranean territories, Hugh and Jimmy Jack romanticize (and identify as a kind of spiritual home) the Latin epics referenced in Translations, which tell the stories of smaller tribes struggling to reclaim their culture under the domination of a tyrannical empire. The struggles detailed in these epic narratives mirror the struggles of Baile Beag’s residents in the face of British colonialism (and the growing threat of eviction from their homes). Hugh also aligns the Latin epics with the rich language and storytelling tradition of the Irish, explaining that these linguistic traditions may be the only thing the British can’t take away from them.
Of course, Hugh’s statement about the value of these literary traditions resonates with a kind of sadness and a sense of loss. This sadness is made poignantly visible through the recitations of Jimmy Jack, for whom the old myths and tales are as real as any life he’s known. Toward the end of the play, he announces his make-believe marriage to Athene—goddess of knowledge—in a symbolic performance of the loneliness, isolation, and absurdity of living within the old languages. As Hugh so aptly says to Owen (before his departure in Act III): “To remember everything is a form of madness” (88).
Poteen/Irish Whiskey
So much of the dialogue in Translations—especially Hugh’s—is fueled by a constant stream of whiskey-drinking. The drink, which inspires Hugh to indulge in flights of poetic recitation and flourish, reads as an important element of Irish culture. In fact, Yolland questions his ability to ever transition into the “hermitic” (48) language of Ireland when he fails to pronounce “poteen” (their locally-brewed whiskey, which is notably derived from potatoes). Yolland’s anxieties are assuaged, however, when he and Marie share a drink together and find themselves bonding over its potency.
Friel also uses alcohol to expose the darker aspects of Irish culture. The whiskey’s potato-based origin develops an ominous resonance with the play’s repeated allusions to a “sweet smell” (of potato blight). In Act II, Owen reveals to Yolland that Hugh is a longtime alcoholic, and that Manus is “lame” because in his childhood, Hugh tripped over his cradle in a drink-induced accident. The eponymous title of the poteen/whiskey is Anna na mBreag, which translates to Anna of the Lies, suggesting a connection between the mind-fogging experience of drinking and the failings of Irish language. Just as Hugh and Manus find themselves trapped in a cycle of codependence (wherein Manus takes care of Hugh and his school for virtually no payment), the Irish people of Baile Beag find themselves trapped in cycles of limited expression (amidst the English-speaking colonists), frustration, and substance abuse. Friel’s play insinuates that although drink is an essential aspect of Irish culture, it is also a force, much like the “old language” that inhibits their progress.
