ABSTRACT
In Brian Friel's 1980 play Translations, the Irish tongues that Spenser was so keen to silence, and that sound strikingly and resistantly in The Famous History of Captain Thomas Stukeley, are back, although they are not staged in the form one might expect. Historical circumstances press upon the school in the form of surveyors and cartographers representing the British crown, which are mapping the land and in effect erasing Irish topography by anglicizing or translating Irish place names. The exchange works dramatically because the Irish place names stand out from the play's other language. This chapter talks about the play that presents an alternative to these English-speaking Irish rebels. Latin and Greek do not stand out, except when they come into contact with English, not the English-as-Irish spoken in the schoolroom, but the other English in the play, the English of the royal surveyors.
