Summary
After Manus leaves, Owen asks Sarah if there is a class that evening, and she nods. When he asks her where Hugh is, she mimes rocking a baby and then weeping, but he does not understand. Doalty and Bridget enter, very noisy and excited. Doalty reports that 50 more soldiers arrived in the last hour, spread out in a big line and marching. They say that the soldiers marched through the crops of a man named Barney Petey, who ran after them yelling.
Doalty tells them that Hugh and Jimmy were at Anna na mBreag's and came out and yelled at the soldiers. Bridget guesses that Hugh won't hold class after all and asks where Manus is. Owen tells them that Manus has gone to Mayo, maybe, and asks them if they saw what happened between Yolland and Manus the previous evening. He tells them he needs to know what happened for when Lancey questions him about it. They tell him that Yolland went home by the back road, but say that if he really wants the scoop, he should ask the Donnelly twins.
Owen goes to Doalty and questions him; Doalty tells him that when he arrived at the dance, the Donnellys' boat was there, but when he left it was gone. Maire enters, wet from the rain and looking distraught, and asks if anyone has heard anything about Yolland's whereabouts. She says that he dropped her off at home and tried to speak Gaelic, accidentally saying, "I'll see you yesterday." Suddenly, she gets down on the floor and points at Owen's map, showing him the town Yolland is from, Winfarthing.
She stands and tells Sarah that her green dress at the dance was very beautiful, before asking Owen again where Yolland is. She talks about the fact that she is going to move to Brooklyn, then mentions that Nellie Ruadh's baby died the previous night.
After she leaves, Doalty mentions that the army will be after Manus in no time. Suddenly, Lancey arrives. He is now a commanding officer. He briskly tells Owen that he will deliver instructions to the group that must be passed on to the other families in the area. He says that if they do not get word about Yolland's whereabouts in the next 24 hours, the soldiers will shoot all the livestock, and if they hear nothing in the next 48 hours, they will begin evicting and leveling all the houses in the area. Owen is crestfallen when he hears this, but continues to translate, as Lancey says that the whole parish will be destroyed.
Lancey asks Sarah to say her name, but she cannot. He then asks Owen where Manus is and Owen tells him that his brother has gone to a wake. Suddenly, Doalty chimes in and tells Lancey that his whole camp is on fire. Alarmed, Lancey runs out of the schoolhouse to tend to it. Bridget makes to go and hide the livestock for safety, when suddenly she smells the camps burning and mistakes it for the smell of a potato blight. She panics, but Doalty reassures her.
Doalty tells Owen that the British did the same thing when his grandfather was young. He says that he wants to fight back, and intimates that the Donnelly twins will know how. He goes off, telling Owen to keep him posted when he talks to Lancey next. Owen picks up the Name-Book and puts it on a pile. As he goes upstairs, Jimmy and Hugh enter, drunk. They discuss the fact that a Mr. Timlin from Cork has been hired by the new national school.
Jimmy tries to get Hugh's attention as Hugh calls for Manus. Jimmy eventually tells him that he is getting married to the goddess Athene at Christmas. Jimmy discusses the fact that he is very lonely and just wants some companionship, before falling down on the floor, weeping, and almost instantly falling asleep.
Hugh goes to pour himself a drink, but spots the Name-Book and begins flipping through and reading it. Owen comes down the stairs and snatches the book, telling his father that it's only a book of names. He then wakes up Jimmy and tells him to go home, warning him that there may be trouble soon. "We must learn those new names," Hugh says, but Owen is putting a sack over his shoulder and preparing to go find Doalty.
Hugh reminisces about his youth with Jimmy, when Maire enters. Hugh tells Maire that he will teach her English, but that even once she learns it, there will be certain meanings that are lost on her. "Master, what does the English word 'always' mean?" she asks Hugh and he tells her it's a silly word. Jimmy sits up and talks to Maire about the Greek words that mean marrying within one's tribe versus marrying outside one's tribe. Hugh begins to recite passages from the Aeneid, struggling to remember.
Analysis
In this section of the play, the mystery of Yolland's whereabouts becomes more pressing. Owen, who is Yolland's friend, questions Doalty and Bridget about what happened to him the previous night, but they do not have clear answers about the course of events, and speak cryptically about the various elements at play. They both intimate that the Donnelly twins, characters who have not featured in the play at all, were somehow involved in Yolland's disappearance, but do not have much more information to share.
While the colonial nature of the British soldiers' business in Ireland is intimated throughout the play, in this section the true nature of the military forces' purposes are laid bare. In Yolland's absence, Lancey makes the announcement that if they do not learn more about his whereabouts soon, they will completely pillage the land. This announcement reveals just how ruthless the soldiers are, that any attempt to make nice with the natives of Ireland is just a ploy to be able to have complete control of the region. Lancey reveals himself to be a true colonial villain in this section.
Lancey's heartlessness is enough to even make Owen reconsider his allegiance to the army. As Lancey dictates the planned actions, Owen becomes upset, and Lancey must remind him to keep doing his job, even though he finds Lancey's threats reprehensible. For the first time, Owen sees the colonial forces for what they are, and realizes that they are not looking out for the interests of the Irish. He is not filled with the will to fight back, as Doalty is, but he begins to see that the faith he put in his superiors was for naught.
Many have called the playwright Brian Friel the "Irish Chekhov" because of his attention to alternately comic and tragic nature of life and his sobering treatment of the human condition. Translations reads much like one of Chekhov's plays, each moment exposing the private dreams, joys, and disappointments of its characters with a heartbreaking realism. The play looks at how the politics of modern life affect the social realities of the characters in a small town, and offers a devastating and unflinching examination of its characters' emotional lives.
The play ends on an ambiguous note, with tensions between the Irish and the English high, and no answers about Yolland's whereabouts. The final scene depicts Hugh and Jimmy, two older, drunk Irishmen, trying to obliterate their memories so that they can be freed from the tyranny of what is happening to their country. "To remember everything is a form of madness," Hugh says at one point, and we see that he is thinking about his own youth and the sense of possibility he once felt. Hugh has surrendered to the idea that they must integrate with the English forces, but he is also sure that full integration is entirely impossible, and he tells Maire that no matter how much English she learns, there will still be gaps in her understanding, the necessary gaps between the colonizer and the colonized.
