Translations (drama)
Translations is a drama by the Northern Irish writer Brian Friel . It consists of three acts. It is a play by the Field Day Theater Company that premiered at the Guildhall in Derry, Northern Ireland, and dates back to September 23, 1980.
From a genre-theoretical perspective, the work can be ascribed to the historical drama , in which case only the context of the plot is real-historical, not the characters.
action
The play is set in Baile Beag in British-occupied Ireland in 1833 and is superficially about the re-mapping of the country and the renaming (translation) of Irish place, field and water names into English names by the so-called Ordnance Survey , an executive agency of the British Crown. The primary action area is a makeshift country school in which the students are taught Irish culture and classical philology. Captain Lancey, an ideal British colonist, is responsible for the implementation of the renaming in the region. The real work has to be done by Lieutenant Yolland, who reports to him, and the Irishman Owen, the son of the headmaster of the country school. In the course of the plot, individual characters develop quite strongly and the spheres “Irish” and “British” converge. Yolland and Owen recognize the absurdity of their assignment and become friends. The climax is a short love scene with Yolland and the very modernist, pro-English Irish Maire, who fall in love with each other despite communication problems. Then Yolland disappears without a trace and the mutual advances fail.
expenditure
- Brian Friel: Translations (Selected Plays). Faber, London 1984, ISBN 0-571-11742-2 .
- German: Translations . In: The Faith Healer . Henschelverlag Kunst & Gesellschaft, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-362-00166-1 .
literature
- Glenn Hutchinson: The Drama of Naming Ireland. Brian Friel's "Translations" and "The Communication Cord" . In: Names. A Journal of Onomastics , Volume 49, 2001, Issue 2, pp. 121-134, ISSN 0027-7738
