Abstract
Brian Friel chooses the fictional time of his play Translations as nineteenth century, 1833, when the hedge schools in which instruction was in Gaelic were replaced by the new national schools in which lessons were to be taught in English. Another important event taking place in this time was the ordnance survey through which Irish place names were replaced with English ones. As a result of these two pivotal events in Irish history, Irish language and, accordingly, Irish culture were eroded and became Anglicized. This play has been studied and discussed from a varying perspectives such as postcolonial, political, or a national perspective. However, Friel bases his play on the above mentioned two events and claims that the play is only about language. As a result, examining this play through the lens of Bakhtin's concepts of unitary language and heteroglossia, focusing on the language and its relationship to Bakhtin's terms of heteroglossia and monoglossia, will aid in observing the effects of two pivotal events in Irish history on Irish language, culture, and people.
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