Reading Steiner,Reading Translations

Brian Friel,as a famous Northern Irish playwright,has been considered as one of the greatest English-language dramatists.He is also honored as an “Irish Chekhov”.His works mainly reflect Irish politics and culture truly and profoundly.Translations,the article is going to discuss,is regarded as the greatest masterpiece whose core subject is to describe the Irish's attitudes of rejection or acceptance when confronted with the invasion caused by the English Empire.But Translations is different from those works which directly describe the undisguised oppression of the Irish people.Friel gives much emphasis to the role of language in the process of reconstructing national identity in Translations.During the process of writing Translations,Brian Friel extensively reads another literary critic George Steiner's work--After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation.Through close reading Translations and After Babel,it is not difficult to find that Steiner's ideas and thoughts about language and translation flash in the play Translations.Therefore,the author will use Steiner's After Babel as the theoretical starting point to analyze Brian Friel's Translations.This thesis tries to explore how Brian Friel creatively incorporates Steiner's ideas about language and translation into his own play so as to achieve a win-win situation for both dramatic writing and translation theory: Steiner's translation theory lights up Friel's creative writing,meanwhile,Friel's Translations itself also makes a contribution to the further development of translation theory.This thesis consists of four parts.The first part is the introduction,which mainly includes the research background,research object and the research status at home and abroad.At the same time,it also points out the purpose and the basic framework of the thesis.The second chapter is based on Steiner's ideas about Hermeneutic and his four-fold hermeneutic motions,and focuses on the analysis of how Friel creatively incorporates Steiner's hermeneutic motions into Translations so as to highlight the theme of oppression and resistance performed in postcolonial drama.Based on the analysis of Steiner's ideas about language and translation,the third chapter will further analyze the plot and characters of Translations so as to explore the interactive relationship between the drama Translations and Steiner's views of language and translation.Friel's Translations is a good proof of Steiner's translation theory.As Steiner discusses in After Babel,the diversity of language results in the necessity of translation.In Translations,the colonial Ireland also faces the similar language predicament;the action of translation eventually and unavoidably leads to the dilemma of culture and identity but also brings about corresponding opportunities;the different responses that those characters make in Translations just reveals some of the opportunities that Friel provides.As Steiner puts forward in After Babel that there is no word or language which is immortal,only time and the native ground can provide a language that translates culture into active life forever.For Ireland descried in Translations,only the combination of language and native ground that can make Irish culture active forever.