Cultural effects on society and behavior

Culture

The Cultural Effects of Translations upon Owen in Brian Friel's play "Translations"

The notion of change, both the change of the Irish nation through colonizing British politics and the character changes of the central protagonist Owen, of Brian Friel's play "Translations" is continually debated throughout the play. How should the Irish country town respond to change, and how can a man such as Owen be both of Ireland, and speak English? The play is set in Baile Beag during the 19th century, then an Irish-speaking community in County Donegal. At the beginning of the play, when Owen Hugh Mor, comes back to the town, he first exclaims in Act I: "I can't believe it. I come back after six years and everything's just as it was! Nothing's changed!"

Clearly, Owen believes that he has changed but the town has not. He returns to his hometown, not simply to engage in an act of nostalgia, or as a kind of prodigal Irish son, returning from Britain. He comes to give assistance to the English Army to translate the names of places and the Irish tongue of the local inhabitants. In Act I and Act II Owen sees himself as a representative of the more forward-thinking Irish population, believing that natural progression for Irish society at this time is with the English, and not against them. However, he softens in this view in Act III, as the English intentions become starkly clear, as well as Owen becomes more affectionate towards the local population.

Owen's place is really an uncomfortable one from the onset -- for he is neither Irish nor fully British. Had he not been brought up in the county, he would not have an occupation for the British, of a translating bridge between two competing cultures. As an Irish translator for Britain Owen functions as a kind of transitional (if not a traitorous) character, between the debates currently begin waged within Balie Beag between the past and present generations. Although the introduction of English through the medium of translation changes the town, it also changes Owen, who gradually grows more respectful of the local attachment to Irish.

Between Act II and Act III Owen's attitude towards the Irish begins its most fundamental change as he realizes that the true purpose of the English solicitation of translation is not to modernize or improve Ireland, but to make taxation of Irish provinces more easy for the Mother Country, and to make sites of potential military unrest more easily identifiable in the case of military turmoil. Thus, the play "Translations," is presented as a series of conflicts, between the Irish and English military as well as between ancient and modern attitudes to the world beyond Ireland. In the first Act of the play the woman Maire says: "We should all be learning to speak English. That's what my mother says. That's what I say. That's what Dan O'Connell said last month in Ennis. He said the sooner we all learn to speak English the better."

Maire wishes to speak English, not to better ingrate herself with the British, but because she wishes to flee the inter-Anglo conflict entirely and work in America. She believes that to speak English is to give herself and to acquire the power of the dominant, colonial and colonizing nation of England, not to become acquiescent to it, a view that Owen at first wholeheartedly supports. Maire supports Owen's initial modernizing with enthusiasm, only gradually realizing along with Owen, that such apparent modernity may come with a dangerous sacrifice of independence.

Towards the end of the play, as Owen's views begin to change, he also begins to rediscover his Irish roots through his new immersion in Irish culture. The town has changed -- it has grown more radically opposed to Britain. At first, Owen is purely frustrated with individuals such as Manus, who can speak English, yet chooses not to, to demonstrate his local rather than national pride and says, "What's 'incorrect' about the place-names we have here?" Magnus rages against the enforced renaming. Manus is far from uneducated -- as a student from a local hedge school he can speak Irish, Latin, and Greek. Magnus prefers, however, to dwell in the Classical rather than the present day, something that Owen first believes is simply ludicrous, even while he gradually begins to appreciate the difficulties of translation more fully, as he attempts to give County Donegal English names. He realizes that Magnus' rage is not simply conservative, but has a nationalist and liberal ethos behind it, however misguided the man's anger may occasionally seem to Owen.

But even at the beginning of Act III, as Owen is beginning to soften, his strategies of going back to the original names of places, before local shortening and slang, suggest to the viewer or reader that such a strategy may be no more effective than keeping things as they are -- the play suggests that there is no perfect translation, no way to perfectly preserve a pristine Irish past, as Magnus wishes to do, nor to create an Irish future in English, without some sacrifice of power to the linguistic tyranny of England. Owen begins his translation project seeing the initial resistance he experiences as part of the Irish people's almost instinctive fear of change, rather than an exhibition of true regional alliances towards local culture, but one cannot keep things 'pure' as even the current state of purity reflects changes over time, even in a purely Irish context.

Thus, at first, Owen sees tradition as simply a romantic excuse to hide from progress out of fear. But Owen comes to a gradual, greater cognizance of one of the dominant themes of Friel's play, namely that no translation occurs perfectly outside of culture. In translation, there is always something lost -- even when something is gained, in terms of understanding -- and in terms of the freedom Maire desires to achieve and attain in America.

When Owen believes in the perfect translation of cultural appellations, words, and manners, the false nature of this idea comes fully 'home' to him, no pun intended, when he is forced to introduce the inhabitants of the town to the British army. He must, as the only man who can speak both Irish and English, and provide the translation for both audiences. Soon the reader or playgoer realizes that Owen is omitting some crucial details and altering others to make the concepts more palatable and less controversial to the ears of the maligned Irish.

Owen feels that he must soften his translation, against his inclination to strive for perfection, to protect his native people and to serve his employer, the British. In translating, he changes the wording of the British outsiders so that the town's residents will not be immediately cognizant of the fact that they will have to pay more taxes, simply stating that from now on the town will know exactly what is its own "by law'." Also, he softens the language and tone of the Irish, translating Maire's blunt sneer towards the tax man, "has he anything to say?' To 'she is dying to hear you.'