the Anglicisation of place-names and replacing the use of native language with a foreign one. The colonial projects depicted in Translations are used by Friel to discuss post-colonial tensions in modern Northern Ireland. Edward Said saw Translations as firmly within the post-colonial discourse, "Brian Friel’s immensely resonant play Translations...immediately calls forth many echoes and parallels in an Indian, Algerian, or Palestinian reader...the silencing of their voices, the renaming of places and replacement of languages by the imperial outsider, the creation of colonial maps and divisions also implied the attempted reshaping of societies, the imposition of foreign languages and other forms of dispossession." Language, identity and culture a. For much of the play, it is understood that characters are speaking Irish, and the English characters cannot understand them. There are also several passages of Latin and Ancient Greek. Though Translations is written almost completely in English (with odd lines of Greek and Latin), Friel intended that the "English onstage represents two separate languages – the Irish we are asked to imagine and the English which is now the 'natural vehicle' for a play on an Irish stage". "Linguistic and cognitive distance" are shown between characters from the different linguistic parties: the Irish and English characters have been given different voices even though their speech is written in the same language. Friel's dramatic conceit allows the audience access to either side of the language barrier, making the misunderstandings and miscommunications between Yolland and Maire in the love scene evident. The "idioms and rhythms of Irish speech" are depicted through Doalty, Bridget and Jimmy Jack Cassie's speeches, contrasting to the British officer, Lancey, who speaks in the "clipped, efficient tones of the King's English", to emphasise the other central theme "colonialism". The idea of a 'doubleness' in response to the Irish-English language conflict is also represented in the play. Considered as "a mid-solution of the Old Gaelic tongue and the modern 'dominant' English", 'doubleness' would require Ireland "either to use an Irish version of English, which includes Gaelic expression, or to be a bi-lingual nation in which both Irish and English are acceptable". W. B. Spring Worthen has argued that in Translations, Friel presents the Irish English to its audience by "trouble[ing] the 'English' surfaces of the play, using Irish English in ways that keep its language 'other' to audiences whose English isn't Irish". Criticism and interpretations Translations received a wide range of