Translations is a play written by Brian Friel in 1980. It is a play in three acts that looks at language, and the history of cultural imperialism in Ireland. It was first performed at the Guildhall in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1980, a decision which Friel thought was significant because it allowed him and his collaborators more creative freedom with the material, and made a more profound statement than if they staged it in Dublin. Friel was intent on the play having a distinctly Irish identity, and said that the text itself "should have been written in Irish."
Translations takes place in Baile Beag, a fictional village that served as the setting for many of Friel's plays. The name means "Small Town." Friel wanted to write a play about the Catholic Emancipation, the time in Ireland between the Act of Union and the Great Famine, the death of the Irish language, and colonialism. The play takes place in 1833 and examines the lives of Irish and English tension in a small provincial town. In spite of all the actors speaking English onstage, the characters are divided into Irish and English characters, and the play looks at the ways that information gets lost in translation in a postcolonial world.
While the play is not one of Friel's better-known works, it was praised for its illumination of distinctive and complex Irish issues at the time of its premiere. In his 1981 review of the production that opened at Manhattan Theater Club, Frank Rich writes, "though Translations is a manifestly uneven piece of theater, it has something profound to say about how words can determine the fates of ordinary people, nations and even centuries of history."
