SOURCE: "Language Play: Brian Friel and Ireland's Verbal Theatre," in Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. LXXII, No. 285, Spring, 1983, pp. 20-56.

In the excerpt below, Kearney discusses Friel's exploration of the role of language in the formation of a community in Translations.

With Translations Friel's exploration of language play takes a new turn. He moves beyond the critical examination of his own aesthetic conjuring with words to the broader question of the socio-cultural role of language in the historical evolution of a community.

Translations begins where Faith Healer ends—in the Donegal town of Ballybeg. Only now it goes by its original gaelic name of Baile Beag.

Friel has wound the clock back a century, recreating the life and circumstances of this small Donegal community as it faced into the social and linguistic upheaval provoked by the Great Famine of the 1840's. The year is 1833 and the old...