Sobre Translations de Brian Friel

Uma das melhores obras que li na faculdade foi Translations de Brian Friel. Sobre a peça encontrei a seguinte informação na Wikipedia:

Translations (Aistrichiuain) is a three-act play by Irish playwright Brian Friel1980. It is set in Baile Beag (Ballybeg), a small, fictional village at the heart of 19th century agricultural 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 cultural imperialism. Despite the 1833 setting, there are obvious parallels between Baile Beag and today's world.

A respeito da mesma foi-nos pedido na altura que escrevessemos um ensaio sobre os diversos temas e aspectos da peça. Há tempos dei com o meu ensaio enquanto arrumava e deitava fora papeladas várias. Reli-o e achei que poderia haver algum interesse em deixar aqui um excerto ou outro. Finalmente seleccionei as partes sobre as quais mais reflecti e que, julgo, poderão suscitar maior interesse em relação às questões polémicas levantadas pela obra de Friel. Nunca acreditei, apesar da afirmação de Brian Friel, que a peça fosse somente sobre língua.

Maybe Friel didn’t want to expose directly the complexity of the English intrusion in his play and he found a subtle way of doing it by calling attention to the difficulties in translating and anglicizing the Irish names. Probably he just wanted to be seen as a writer and not as a ‘politician’. When he wrote Translations he wrote it as a piece of art rather than a political document. At least this is what we can get from his statement.

Nevertheless, the Irish weren’t asked anything about the translation and anglicization of everything related to the Irish tongue; they just had to accept it as they had to accept learning a foreign language.

The intrusion made by the English was a violent one. English was imposed and so it could never be only a matter of language. As far as I’m concerned, the political elements have a profound importance because they regulate everything in a people’s life, including language.

I don’t think that the play is lost if ‘it becomes overwhelmed by that political element’ because the political aspect justifies the complexity of language and the difficulties in translating and anglicizing. Besides what can be more political than the imposition of a foreign language?