Translations is a three-act play by Irish playwright Brian Friel, written in 1980. It is set in Baile Beag (Ballybeg), a County Donegal village in 19th-century Ireland. Friel has said that Translations is "a play about language and only about language", but it deals with a wide range of issues, stretching from language and communication to Irish history and cultural imperialism. Friel said that his play "should have been written in Irish" but, despite this fact, he carefully crafted the verbal action in English, bringing the political questions of the play into focus. Baile Beag ("Small Town") is a fictional village, created by Friel as a setting for several of his plays, although there are many real places called Ballybeg throughout Ireland.
Performance and publication Translations was first performed at the Guildhall, Derry, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, 23 September 1980. It was the first production by the Field Day Theatre Company founded by Friel and Stephen Rea. It was directed by Art Ó Briain and featured the following cast:Friel, Brian (1981). Translations. London: Faber and Faber.
Mick Lally (Manus) Ann Hasson (Sarah) Roy Hanlon (Jimmy Jack) Nuala Hayes (Máire) Liam Neeson (Doalty) Brenda Scallon (Bridget) Ray McAnally (Hugh) Stephen Rea (Owen) David Heap (Captain Lancey) Shaun Scott (Lieutenant Yolland)
The staging in Derry was significant for a number reasons. Friel and Stephen Rea thought of Derry as a clean slate where they could have more creative control over their work. Rea also thought that the play had a much profounder impact being staged in Derry than if it had been staged in Dublin. Art Ó Briain also pushed for a Derry staging. Furthermore, Guildhall's proximity to the play's County Donegal setting and the strong Northern accents of the mostly Ulster cast created a strong sense of "local pride" and "community passion". Derry itself was also the subject of a name dispute, fitting for a play "concerned with place names".
The play opened in London at the Hampstead Theatre in May 1981, before transferring to the Lyttelton stage at the National Theatre in August of that year.
Translations received its American premiere at Cleveland Play House in 1981, starring Richard Halverson as Hugh. The production was directed by Kenneth Albers with scene and lighting design by Richard Gould., Article at clevelandplayhouse.com. Retrieved 15 September 2014. The play was staged in New York City later that year by the Manhattan Theatre Club, starring Barnard Hughes. It was briefly revived on Broadway in 1995 in a production starring Brian Dennehy. In 2006–2007, the Manhattan Theatre Club returned it to the stage at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey and the Biltmore Theatre in New York, directed by Garry Hynes.Gluck, Victor. "Translations" Review at Theaterscene.net, 29 January 2007. Retrieved 11 March 2008.
The play was published in 1981 by Faber and Faber, who still publish it today. It is published in the United States and performance rights are held by Samuel French Inc. It is a set text on the Leaving Certificate English curriculum in Ireland and, in the United Kingdom, it remains a popular set text among English and Drama & Theatre A-Level students. It won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize for 1985.
An Irish-language version of the play has been produced. The play has also been translated into Welsh by Elan Closs Stephens. The Welsh version has visited a number of venues in Wales and was first published by Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, under its Welsh title Torri Gair ("Breaking the Word"), in 1982.
The play was staged in 2003 in Greece by "Aplo Theatre" directed by Antonis Antypas. One of the last performances was attended by the author himself. According to Kathimerini newspaper, the photos of the Athenian performance that arrived at his home in Donegal made him decide to make the not easy journey. The physiognomies of the actors played a decisive role.
Translations was adapted for Belarus in 2009 by Mykalai Pinygin at Janka Kupala Theater. Irish characters speak Belarusian in the play, and the English speak Russian, which draws parallels with the period of russification of Belarus by Imperial Russia in 19th-20th century.
Translations was adapted as a radio play directed by Kirsty Williams, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, on 4 September 2010 (see Translations (radio play)).BBC – Saturday Play – Translations
Translations was adapted for a Catalan audience in February, 2014 by Ferran Utzet, and performed at the Biblioteca de Catalunya (Library of Catalonia) in Barcelona. It was produced by Perla 29. VilaWeb - Irish play holds lessons for Catalonia
In 2017 Translations was directed by Bill Kerr at University of Manitoba’s Black Hole Theatre Company.
Translations was performed at the Olivier Theatre from 22 May to 11 August 2018, starring Colin Morgan as Owen and Ciarán Hinds as his father. It was directed by Ian Rickson.
In 2022 Translations was translated into te reo Māori by Hēmi Kelly, a full-time lecturer in te reo Māori at the Auckland University of Technology. It was commissioned by the Embassy of Ireland in Aotearoa New Zealand and is the first major Irish literary work available in the language.
Translations premiered in Ukraine amidst the Russian invasion of 2022. Kyrylo Kashlikov directed it at Lesya Ukrainka Theater and in 2023 the play toured in Dublin's Abbey Theater in Ukrainian with English subtitles.
In 2025, the play was staged in Senegal in French.
In 2026, the play was staged in Cyprus in a bilingual production co-translated by Patrick Myles and Andreas Tselepos and directed by Myles, with Greek Cypriot replacing the original Gaelic.
Inspirations and influences Five years prior to writing Translations, Friel mentioned a number of topics going through his mind: a play set sometime between the Act of Union and the Great Famine in the 19th century; a play about Daniel O'Connell and the Catholic Emancipation; a play about colonialism; and a play about the death of the Irish language, the acquisition of English and its profound effects. During this time, Friel had made a couple of accidental discoveries: that his great-great-grandfather was a hedge-schoolmaster, leading Friel to read about hedge-schools in Ireland; and that the first trigonometrical base set up by the Ordnance Survey in 1828 was next to his residence in Muff, leading him to read about the man in charge of the survey, Colonel Thomas Frederick Colby, who would later serve as inspiration for one of Translation's characters, Captain Lancey. Friel then discovered A Paper Landscape in 1976, which synthesized everything he had been thinking about into the perfect metaphor, map-making, serving as the foundation for his work.
A Paper Landscape was written by John Harwood Andrews and first published in 1975 by Oxford University Press. It examines the Ordnance Survey's map-making operation in Ireland which began in 1824, with the first maps appearing between 1835 and 1846, and production continuing until almost the end of the century.
"Friel's reading of George Steiner's After Babel was absolutely essential to the creation of Translations."
Characters
Manus – a scholar who is his late twenties/thirties who is one of Hugh's sons and lame. Hugh treats Manus badly, never paying him, acknowledging his hard work and treating him like a 'footman', despite this Manus respects and refuses to go against his father. He speaks only Irish in front of the British, even though he knows how to speak English. He tries to teach Sarah how to speak. Manus has difficulty walking due to an injury sustained from his father when he was a baby. Sarah – she has had a speech defect all her life, leading many in the town to consider her dumb. Jimmy Jack Cassie – the "infant prodigy" is a bachelor in his sixties, who never washes or changes his clothes. Despite being fluent in both Latin and Greek, he still enjoys attending the hedge-school. He is obsessed with the Greek Goddess Athena, and the line between reality and fiction blurs for him throughout the play. Máire – a strong woman in her twenties, she wants to learn English so that she can emigrate to America. Doalty – a young man described as 'generous and slightly thick' with his idiocy mocked by characters such as Hugh. However, Doalty is implied to be smarter than he seems, and is involved in the Irish resistance with connections to the Donnelly Twins. He studies at the local hedge-school. Bridget – a young girl with "a countrywoman's instinctive cunning". She has a close, implied romantic, relationship with Doalty. She studies at the local hedge-school. Hugh – a large man in his late sixties, perpetually drunk. He is hedge-master at Baile Beag's hedge-school, often quizzing his students on the origins of words. Owen – a well dressed, handsome young man in his twenties, who is also one of Hugh's sons. He is employed part-time by the British to provide English translations of place names in Ireland. The British mistakenly call him Roland. Captain Lancey – a middle-aged officer, competent at cartography but lacking in social skills. Lieutenant George Yolland – in his late twenties/early thirties, with a tall awkward appearance. He is in Ireland by chance. Having missed his boat to India, he subsequently enlisted in the Army, was assigned to the Engineers, then posted to Dublin, and finally sent to Baile Beag with the Ordnance Survey. He often proclaims his admiration for the Irish culture and language despite being unable to speak it. He falls in love with Maire. Donnelly Twins – they are referred to several times throughout the play, but are never shown on-stage.
Plot
The play is set in the quiet community of Baile Beag (later anglicised to Ballybeg), in County Donegal, in 1833. Many of the inhabitants have little experience of the world outside the village. In spite of this, tales about Greek goddesses are as commonplace as those about the potato crops, and, in addition to Irish, Latin and Greek are spoken in the local hedge school. Friel uses language as a tool to highlight the problems of communication — lingual, cultural, and generational. Both Irish and English characters in the play "speak" their respective languages, but in actuality it is English that is mostly spoken by the actors. This allows the audience to understand all the languages, as if a translator was provided. However, onstage, the characters cannot comprehend each other. This is due to lack of compromise from both parties, the English and Irish, to learn the others' language, a metaphor for the wider barrier that is between the two parties.
Act 1 The play opens with a Hedge School in Baile Beag. It is supposedly run by the alcoholic schoolmaster Hugh, although his lame aspiring teacher son Manus does most of the work, and is mistreated by his father despite this. Manus helps Sarah, who the village consider dumb due to her speech impediment, and is oblivious to her feelings for him. Students begin to arrive including Manus' partner, Máire, who is currently upset with Manus due to his inability to stand up to Hugh and plans to learn English and leave for America. One student, Doalty, has stolen a measuring pole from the English army, which Manus respects and Máire criticizes.