Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T06:35:25.086Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ireland in translation

The tension between Irish and English has led to a creative space for translation and to a unique use of Irish English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2011

Michael Cronin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Translation has long featured as a convenient metaphor for the Irish condition. However, its use as metaphor should not disguise the insights translation provides into the status and formation of Irish English. When Richard II arrived in Ireland in 1394 his problems were not only political and military. They were also linguistic. On the occasion of the visit of the Irish kings to Richard in Dublin that same year, James Butler, the second Earl of Ormond, had to interpret the king's speech into Irish. Loyalty to Richard's kingship did not extend to loyalty to his chosen tongue. The translation skills of another Earl of Ormond would be further called upon in 1541 when the Irish parliament made Henry VIII King of Ireland. The Earl on this occasion interpreted the Speaker's address into Irish for the benefit of the Lords and Commons, although they were predominantly of Anglo-Norman or Old English origin. The act of translation, in this instance, was not without its ironies. James Butler was interpreting into a language that had been outlawed four years previously under the Act for the English Order, Habit and Language.

Type
Original Article
Information
English Today , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 53 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bowers, F. (ed.) 1953. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Decker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
de Brún, P. 1977–9. ‘A seventeenth-century translation of the First Psalm.’ Éigse, 17: 55–68.Google Scholar
Cronin, M. 2004. ‘Babel Átha Cliath: The languages of Dublin.’ New Hibernia Review, 8(4), 9–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cronin, M. 2006. ‘The translational island: plurilingualism, language lessons and the third space.’ Special Issue on ‘Irish English, Varieties and Variations’. Études Irlandaises, 31(2), 79–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deane, S. 1985. ‘Introduction’, Celtic Revivals. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Ganahl, R. 2001. ‘Free markets: Language, commodification and art.’ In Apter, E. (ed.), Translation in a Global Market. Special issue of Public Culture, 13(1).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, D. 1978. Beside the Fire. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kiberd, D. 1993. Synge and the Irish Language. Second edition. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.Google Scholar
Leerssen, J. 1986. Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, its Development and Literary Expression prior to the Nineteenth Century. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, M. 2010. ‘What we must do to move education into the fast lane.’ The Irish Times 5 October.Google Scholar
Ó hAodha, M. 1969. ‘Introduction’, Douglas Hyde, Abhráin Grádh Chúige Connacht: The Love Songs of Connacht. Shannon: Irish University Press.Google Scholar
Synge, J. M. 1966. Collected Works. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tymoczko, M. & Colin, I. (eds) 2003. Language and Tradition in Ireland. Continuities and Displacements. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Yeats, W. B. 1892. ‘Letter to the Editor.’ United Ireland, 17 December.Google Scholar