Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” I would have to disagree with Juliet’s assertion that a name is a meaningless convention, and I think Brian Friel would as well. It is a concept addressed in his play Translations, set at a time of change for his native Ireland, when the country itself is on the cusp of submission to the imperialism of England. Two significant colonial events are taking place: the implementation of the National School System which replaced locally-run hedge schools like the one in which the play is set, as well as the remapping of Ireland and anglicising of place names by the British. To translate something means to change it from one condition to another, or adapt it from one system or language into another; indeed this metaphor can be applied to this play but also to Irish history. In this paper I will discuss this play as an examination of language as a defining characteristic of a particular culture and its consequent power as a colonizing tool, the way language and communication can manifest themselves as positive or negative influences and how Friel exposes the violence, figurative and literal, suffered by the Irish people as a result of these translations. The English colonizers are using language in a negative capacity, as a vehicle to exert their power over Ireland. They claim that the renaming of places is being done “to advance the interests of Ireland,” (31), when in fact it is a step to eradicating the Gaelic language. While the English may not be enslaving the Irish or moving them all to reservations, as in the case of Canadian and American First Nations peoples, this is an example of a more subtle, but equally as damagin... ... middle of paper ... ...slating a story (and struggling with the translation of it) that celebrates the triumphs of the Roman Empire, and written in Latin, the language of the conquering Romans. The irony of this final scene is that Translations is a play written by an Irish playwright, but written and performed in English, the language of Ireland’s conquerors. The message of Translations is simple: language is something much bigger than a way to communicate. Language is at the cornerstone of identity, whether it personal identity or that of an entire nation. To attempt to eradicate the language of a particular place is a crime against its character and legacy. Given Ireland’s unique colonial history and the challenges it still faces today in regards to the preservation of its culture and language, it is easy to see why this play has become such an important piece of Irish culture.
Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy is a play infamous for its gore and spectacular violence. Within the play there are multiple murders and lopped limbs aplenty, but the chief victim of the play – the primary spectacle – is Lavinia. Her ill fate is first conveyed to the reader through the ornate words of Marcus, and from this point on Lavinia is seen, but heard only through the words of the other characters. Indeed, in Titus Andronicus Lavinia is the spectacle of the play, and her manifestation is created only through the words of the other characters. It is through the silence of Lavinia and her reliance on other’s words – not her own – that the play is most poignant. However, in Julie Taymore’s adaptation of the play to the screen, the relationship between words and spectacle changes. On the screen the words fall back into a supporting role, letting the visual horror of Lavinia’s torture run unbridled, and become the main focus point.
A conquered people leave behind little in records. This statement is certainly true of the Irish after the Elizabethan and Cromwellian conquest of Britain. Historians must then search for a reliable source for the history of those conquered.. Luckily, Ireland has a long legacy of bardic poetry. In the four papers we read in this class, four authors, Brendan Bradshaw, Nicholas Canny, T.J. Dunne and Bernadette Cunningham, already analyzed these poems. Each has come to different, separate conclusions, about how the conquest effected the native Irish. The opinions vary. Brenden Bradshaw sees a new nationalism arise. The others disagree. T.J. Dunne
To realize the vision of the play, the script, set-up, costumes, stagecraft, sound design, and acting have to communicate a unified message with which the audience will relate. The script will be tailored to ensure that the audience can understand the play as it proceeds. This is in terms of the language and terms used. Though the language will not be modern, it will be English that can be understood by the audience. This will be English of antique England as it will give the play a feeling of ancient times. The scriptwriter will carry out research on the level of understanding the local people will have of ancient English so as to ascertain that the script matches this level. Although many plays of that era were sung and accompanied by dance, this play will be acted out with spoken word rather than songs. This is because speaking will ensure the audience hears the conversations as they go on and that they understand. This is ...
In précis, through comparing and contrasting the inclusion of certain themes and textual features, and their transformations, the main motifs behind these alterations are clearly established. These transformations are influenced by the author’s social and cultural context, as well as their present defined social order, which is extensively reflected in BBC’s adaptation of the Shakespearean play, “Much Ado about Nothing”.
Throughout my research into the subject of the Irish in England's industrial north during the early nineteenth century, one fact became quite clear; contemporary writers' treatment of the Irish was both minimal and negative. I consulted many sources, Friedrich Engels, Leon Faucher, James Kay-Shuttleworth to name but a few and the reoccurring theme as pertaining to the Irish in all these works was mainly consistent; the Irish were a lazy, vulgar people prone to drinking and brawling.
The history of Ireland is diverse and fact is mixed with fiction. Through the years in which Ireland had a famine, many people migrated over to the United States in order to have a better life and gain some prosperity. When they arrived they were met with less than open arms, but rather a whole new world of discrimination. I will be discussing the summary I have done on the discrimination of Irish in America today, followed by my reactions, two other Irish blooded reactions, the history, identities, and transitions, of these people of which I learned through doing this research.
It is arguably in comedy that metatheatricality emerges most strongly, allowing a play to parody its own status as drama. But while The Merchant of Venice does employ metatheatrical elements, its classification as comedy is both problematic and unsettling. Ultimately, metatheatricality imbues the story with tragic thematic undertones, and consequently a comic structure gives way to the tragic . It is in considering the play as a written work that such undertones seem to emerge most strongly. Ironically, the accumulation of words—the physical construction of lines within scenes—reveals a pattern in which words themselves emerge as the tragic threat. Speech and language become a precari...
To pin these works against the idea of colonization, Cesaire and Hwang must greatly alter the content. They do so, but they also mimic the styles of the original versions. A Tempest is written in modern English, and Shakespeare's songs are substituted with slave tunes. Hwang dr...
Gerald of Wales’ was most likely never in Ireland, and his writing is not an accurate portrayal of the Irish, but a chance to discuss hybridity and turn his readers against it while also the Irish.
Some papers demonstrate crude analyses without limiting the research focus (Yam, 2011; Yan, 2009), whereas others employ a specific translation notion (Liu, 2013; Zhou, 2007; Chen, 2014; Ren, 2010). Besides, a few essays examine translations of the adapted movie (Zhan, 2010; Wu & Zhang, 2011), or Russian version of the fiction (Cechanovičius & Krūminienė, 2012). Despite the fact that there are existing academic researches on Lolita’s translations, they are rarely emphasized on how ideology in the social and culture setting interact with a patron’s ideology to impact a translator in creating Lolita’s translation. Hence, this paper will fill this gap by exploring the asymmetrical power relations between the publisher and the
Foster, R.F.,ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland. Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York, 1989.
This paper will investigate the culture of Ireland by taking a look at the five characteristics. Each characteristic will be allotted its own subsections. The first section will encompass the history to illuminate the connection of a country’s struggle and their learned culture. I will communicate the key aspects that connect an individual culture to the region of the world it inhabits in the second section. In the third section, the language and art of the land are discussed to draw lines to the symbols a culture is founded upon. The fourth section of the essay is dedicated to the characteristic of culture being made up of many components. This is illustrated by the ethnicity/racial, weather, terrain, and military breakdown of the island. The final section is commentary on the dynamic characteristic that interacting cultures learn, develop, and transform due to their shared contact and friction.
...wn to 4,000 acres. The undertakers, mostly landowners from England and Wales, were bound by gain, to plant ninety families that would constitute the full gambit of the English ‘social pyramid’. They also undertook not to lease to Native Irish. Success fell far short of ambitions. The grants proved too enormous for on undertaker to supervise and much of the New English planters never materialised. As a consequence, and the willingness of the Irish tenancy to pay higher rents, most of the displaced native Irish returned to the land. This had the unforeseen modernising effect of placing the Gaelic Irish into the newly created English social structure. As a result of the vast military activity all over the island, huge areas of impenetrable terrain was opened up. This had the knock on effect of improving travel, communications and trade over the majority of the island.
Only recently has Ireland been included in the extensive study of postcolonial societies. Our geographical closeness to Britain, the fact that we are racially identical, the fact that we speak the same language and have the same value systems make our status as postcolonial problematic. Indeed, some would argue it is impossible to tell the difference between Irish and British. However, to mistake Irish for English to some is a grave insult. In this essay, I would like to look at Ireland’s emerging postcolonial status in relation to Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. By examining Fanon’s theories on the rise of cultural nationalism in colonised societies, one can see that events taking place in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century bear all the hallmarks of a colonised people’s anti-colonial struggle through the revival of a culture that attempts to assert difference to the coloniser and the insistence on self-government.
To begin with a brief definition of translation, it can be stated that it is basically transferring the words included in one language to the other by making necessary changes and sticking to the source language taken from either the source text or source speech. With the help of rapid technology and the network among countries, the significance given to translation has become an indispensable part of wide range of business and communication purposes. The source determines whether it will be a job of translators or interpreters. It is important to refer each of them by explaining the differences between them at this point.