Translations by Brian Friel Brian

¶ … Translations" by Brian Friel Brian Friel's play "Translation" is all about the unfortunate and gradual decline of the Irish identity and language as portrayed in O'Donnel family's experience. This issue is what is central to the play. In this paper; I present an in-depth analysis of the central themes in the play "Translation" by Brian Friel.This play documented the sad end of Irish language and its replacement by the English language. At the very beginning of the play, Maire is note perfect in speaking English.

The only thing that she can say are just a few words as well as select English phrases as is seen when she said "In Norfolk we bespot ourselves around the maypole" (Friel 8).We also see Jimmy in almost similar situation even though the Irish Maire is somehow more vocal about her apparent lack of English knowledge. Jimmy on the other hand is only conversant with Irish and he does not known the word "bo-som," a term which he had a lot of difficulty in pronouncing (Friel 9).

The characters in the play are noted to gradually improve their proficiency and skills throughout.At the end of the play, we notice that Maire is making a lot of efforts to learn English. She feels that it is necessary for her to be proficient in spoken and written English for the sake of her future prosperity. She feels that sticking to her first language, Irish would be a total disaster.

Her opinions are in contrast with those of the character Hugh who views English as a very crude language of commerce. Her opinions are in contrast with those of Hugh who is never conservative with his mother tongue and believes that his language Irish, must be able to effectively evolve for it to survive extinction.He emphasized the need for learning new names and went ahead and paralleled it with the making of a new home.

He views the preservation of old language as a barrier to the progress of Irish people (Friel 66).He related this to the character Jimmy who can never retain the rather beneficial Latin and Greek languages. The character Owen is noted to be an interesting one. This is because he takes utmost pleasure in effective subverting of language for his own gain and humor. When he was translating for the Gaelic listeners, he purposefully did so inaccurately, a fact which angered his brother.

In critically viewing this scenario, we see that that the character Owen was intentionally demonstrating the power.