The Translational Island : Plurilingualism, Language Lessons and the Third Space

Abstract

In this essay it is argued that if translation acted as the crucible for the emergence of a distinctive literature in Hiberno-English in Modern Ireland, translation is once more playing a role in the reconfiguration of the relationship between Irish and English in Late Modern Ireland. The reconfiguration is one that is altering the terms of exchange between the two languages and points to a set of strategies that undermine some of the more conventional assumptions about the relationship between language and politics in Ireland. The essay examines recent poetry translation from Irish into English and claims that the hybrid plurilingualism found in these translations implies a different kind of reader from the one summoned into being by the rural vernacular of Hyde's prose translations or the Kiltartanese of Lady Gregory's Molière translations. The translations are situated in debates in late modernity around translingualism and in the wider context of the significant changes in the language communities on the island of Ireland.