Marina Carr: Speech, Translation and Stage

A wedding speech undoes its own praise

In the wedding speech read by Carr, Mrs Kilbride praises her son, then reverses the expected mother/son and husband/wife roles. The social form of congratulation becomes a disclosure of possessiveness.

The effect depends on the relation between a conventional occasion and a sentence that no longer fits it. Correcting the role words into ordinary logic would remove the dramatic disturbance rather than merely improve grammar.

Sources for this section: [1]

What the translator had to defend

Fernandes explains that she added a footnote because readers might treat that reversal as a translation mistake.

This is a concrete example of fidelity requiring explanation rather than silent normalization. The note records a translator’s decision; it does not guarantee that every audience will respond in the same way. A translation can preserve a productive difficulty without reproducing every feature of the original idiom.

Sources for this section: [1] · [1]

A script still needs a production

The programme-derived record names Patrick Mason as director, Monica Frawley as designer, Conor Linehan under song and Ruth Hickey under additional music.

The Abbey record gives 7 October 1998 as the opening date.

Those credits locate responsibility. They cannot tell us the exact pause or audience reaction in the scene. A proposed performance must therefore label timing, emphasis and movement as new decisions. The source record and the rehearsal proposal answer different questions.

Sources for this section: [2] · [3]

Exercise: retain an intentional reversal

Invented line for a retirement dinner: “He has been a loyal apprentice to the apprentice he trained, and a demanding master to the master who trained him.” Write a translator’s note explaining why you retain both role reversals. Then propose two staging choices, one exposing the speaker’s pride and one exposing the audience’s discomfort, without adding a joke or claiming that either was used in Carr’s production.

Reference answer: “The reversed relationships are intentional: praise blurs who teaches and who depends on whom. I retain them rather than repair the logic.” The speaker could warmly gesture to the apprentice, treating the words as an honour; the audience could remain still through a short pause after “trained him”.

The note protects the verbal design. The gestures offer contrasting interpretations rather than translating a stage direction that was never supplied. Another defensible answer might use timing instead of movement, provided it says which part of the text remains unchanged.

Sources for this section: [1] · [1]