Brian Friel's play Translations deals with an essential feature of post-colonialism: cultural translation, or the struggle of the Irish people at the crossroads between their traditional identity and the newly acquired English identity. The action of the play is set in 1833 in a rural community from County Donegal. The plot is simple: a detachment of Royal Engineers from the British Army is sent to make an Ordnance Survey map of the local landscape in Donegal. This military mission is disguised as a benign exercise in geographical linguistics, its actual purpose being the transcription of Gaelic place names into English. Thus, the old Irish space is to be re-mapped as the old place names are replaced with new ones. The attempt to create a new cartography obviously threatens the identity of the Irish cultural space. The re-naming of the territories and the re-mapping of the traditional world is part of the imperialist attempt to assimilate the old culture into the new one. The new map of the Irish territories is thus obviously much more than a mere paper representation: it is a complete reconfiguration of the traditional world. The result is a palimpsestic culture, formed by the traces of the old Irish culture and the elements of the new, dominant British culture. In the play, the best way in which this peculiar cultural dialogue is represented is through the various relationships that are established among the main characters of the play. Thus, Captain Lancey and Yolland, both from the British army, experience the dialogue with the Irish people in opposite ways, but, nevertheless, neither of them is able to communicate with the other culture. The main statement made by the play is thus that cultural translation is ultimately impossible.
             First of all, language is seen in the play as the main vehicle for cultural identity. Captain Lancey, one of the British representatives who come to Donegal to draft the new linguistic map and...