Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Translations
I have just started to read the play "Translations" and I am very confused. The play so far has been interesting and engaging. What I am confused on is when the characters are speaking English and when they are speaking Gaelic. And to be honest I am not sure what Gaelic is. I went to youtube and found a video of the Lord's Prayer in Gaelic. Since I know what the Lord's Prayer should sound like in English I thought it would be a good thing to look at for a comparison. It really did help. I did not know Gaelic was so different from English. Since it is spoken in Ireland, which now English is a very predominant language in, I assumed Gaelic would have some words sound different than the English words. I was totally wrong. If someone was to speak Gaelic to me I would have no idea what they were saying. Hearing The Lord's Prayer really helped me identify with the characters Captain Lancey and Lieutenant Yolland. Both of the men are in a country where they do not speak the language. I have never been to a place where there wasn't at least ten other people who spoke the same language as me. I cannot imagine how much extra work the language barrier adds onto their job. I am interested to see how Yolland does with learning some Gaelic and see if the language barrier will be as big of a problem as I think it will be.
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Being somewhere without knowing the language can be so hard! I was able to help translate for a french couple who were visiting Ireland and having dinner in the same restaurant as I was. Even something as simple as explaining how the menu worked and what the specials were was a huge help to them because they knew very little English. I hope someday to travel somewhere outside my comfort zone to get that experience of not understanding the language. I feel like it would be a really neat thing to do, though I'd want a translator for back just in case!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in that the language barrier would be difficult and overwhelming in a country that doesn't understand English. We are lucky to have so many people speak our language!
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