Found in Translation

No Inte rpre te r, No Justice
What happens when an interpreter isn’t provided to an accused criminal who needs one to understand
court proceedings? The victims are often the ones who suffer most. In 2007, a Liberian refugee
living in Maryland was indicted on nine counts of rape and sexual abuse of his nieces, aged seven
years and eighteen months. When the courts had trouble finding an interpreter for Vai, the
defendant’s native language, extensive delays ensued. Eventually, the case was dismissed on the
grounds that the defendant’s right to a speedy trial had been denied, and he walked free. (He was
later deported back to Liberia, but the victims never did get their day in court.)
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Shakespeare and Soap Operas in Gaeilge

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Irish. You might know it as Gaelic. But in actual fact, there are many types of
Gaelic—Irish refers to the type that is spoken in Ireland, dating all the way
back to the third or fourth century. If you have any Irish ancestors—about
thirty-six million Americans do—many of them spoke Irish. In the 1890s,
there were nearly half a million people speaking as Gaeilge (in Irish) living in
the United States, with approximately seventy-five thousand in New York
alone.
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What’s the status of the language today? If you travel to Ireland, you will see
the Irish language prominently displayed at the airport, on road signs, and on
the exterior of official government buildings. But you might not be aware that
there are people scattered all around Ireland who still speak this language
today. In total, there are an estimated 1.6 million people in the Republic of
Ireland who speak it with varying degrees of fluency.
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It has official language
status in both Ireland and the European Union.
Estimates of the number of fully native speakers of Irish (people who claim
it as their mother tongue) fall between forty thousand and eighty thousand
people. Any area where Irish is predominantly spoken at home is known as a
Gaeltacht. Some of the highest concentrations are found in the Gaeltacht
regions of Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, and Cork. For example, the
Donegal Gaeltacht, one of the largest, has a population of more than twenty
thousand inhabitants. It’s in the Donegal town of Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore in
English) where the famous recording artist Eithne (known as Enya to English
speakers) was raised with Irish as her first language.
What may surprise you even more is that Irish has become a language not
just for use in quaint villages of the Irish countryside. In an effort to keep the
language thriving and to cater to the tens of thousands of people who do still
speak Irish at home, this ancient language coexists among modern
technologies. Ireland has a radio station, Radió na Gaeltachta, with
programming in Irish. In fact, there is even a television station, TG4, which
broadcasts exclusively in Irish. Tune into TG4 and you can watch the weather,
the international news, talk shows, comedy programs, and even a soap opera in
Irish.
A soap opera? That’s right. In the vein of All My Children or Days of Our
Lives, the show is called Ros na Rún, a clever word play that can either mean
“Wood of the Secrets” or “Headland of the Darlings.” Ros na Rún has
approximately 140,000 viewers—more than three or four times the number of
native speakers of Irish—who tune in to the show two nights per week, thirty-
five weeks out of the year. The majority of viewers rely on English subtitles to
understand the plot twists and dialogue.

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David McLoughlin has personally subtitled more than two hundred episodes
of the show.
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According to David, many of the most difficult terms to
translate are actually swear words, a uniquely rich treasure of the Irish
language. But swear words don’t always translate easily or directly. For
example, the word cunús would translate as “pig” in English, but is much more
vulgar when used as a swear word in Irish. So the translators have to choose a
swear word in English that conveys a similar degree of offensiveness to the
listener. Thankfully, and as anyone who has seen an interview with Colin
Farrell can attest, the Irish do not exactly lack swear words in English.
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Why go to so much trouble to make programs available in Irish? Wouldn’t it
be easier to just do it in English, given the fact that pretty much all Irish
speakers are fluent in English anyway? Here’s one compelling reason to keep
the language alive. The Irish language has one of the oldest vernacular
literatures in Western Europe—only Greek and Latin are older. The earliest
Irish poetry dates back to the sixth century; by comparison, the earliest form of
French poetry appeared about six hundred years later. The fifteen-hundred-
year-old tradition of Irish-language literature remains unbroken to the present
day and has had a major impact on literature in other languages, too. In fact,
for such a small country, Ireland and its language have made a
disproportionate impact on world literature—English literature in particular.
In his Midsummer Night’s Dream, the spirit Puck is related to the Irish púca,
which means ghost. In Romeo and Juliet, Queen Mab is a nod to Queen Maeve
of Celtic tradition, whose name was written as
in Old Irish script. In
Coriolanus, the title character is greeted with “A hundred thousand welcomes,”
which is an English translation of the typical Irish greeting, céad míle fáilte.
Shakespeare also borrowed from numerous Irish songs in his plays. For
example, the song “Yellow Stockings,” which Shakespeare used in Twelfth
Night, is an Irish song known as “Cuma, Liom,” which means “I don’t mind.” In
Henry V, Shakespeare even includes the Irish language directly in his dialogue:
When as I view your comely grace
Caleno custurame
Your golden hairs, your angel’s face,
Caleno custurame
The phrase caleno custurame is not just some nonsense phrase that
Shakespeare conjured out of nowhere. It’s the name of an Old Irish harp
melody called “Cailín ó cois Stúir mé,” meaning “girl from the banks of the
Suir” (the River Suir is located in Tipperary, Ireland).
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Indeed, even King
Lear, regarded to be Shakepeare’s finest work, is thought to be based on the

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older Irish legend, the Children of Lir, which tells the tale of a king deprived of
what he believes is his rightful ascendancy over his children and peers. In other
words, no Irish-language literature would have meant—you guessed it—no
Shakespeare, at least, not as we know him.
So what will the fate of this language of such historical importance
ultimately be? “Irish is not dying, but evolving with the times,” McLoughlin
explains. He believes that during the Celtic Tiger years, many Irish people
forgot about their culture and what made them unique as a people. “The
argument that Irish is a dying language is one of ignorance,” McLoughlin
points out. “It’s no longer the language of fishermen and small farmers in the
west of Ireland, but the language of college students, academics, and television
personalities,” he notes. “People see it as a token of our identity and a
reflection of our national spirit. The attitudes of children are much more
positive—they see its future and the values associated with it.”
Indeed, the Internet has been quietly breathing new life into the Irish
language. Google Translate is now available in Irish, and there is an Irish user
interface for Facebook. Many Irish language lessons are available on the
Internet, and there are even apps for iPhones and iPads. Who would have
thought that you could do a video chat via a Skype user interface in a language
dating back to the third and fourth century? Well, you can with Irish.
But perhaps the most convincing reason of all to care about the future of
languages like Irish is best expressed in a saying from the language itself, “Tír
gan teanga, tír gan anam,” which translates into English as, “A country without
a language is a country without a soul.” Though the phrase sounds far more
eloquent in Irish than in English, we think Shakespeare would approve.