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Interpreters and the politics of translation and traduction in sixteenth-century Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Patricia Palmer
Patricia Palmer*
Affiliation:
Department of English and Related Literature, University of York
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Extract

The story of late Tudor Ireland is, in part, a story of language. The political and military developments that brought New English and native Irish into a closer and increasingly violent proximity also brought two languages into confrontation. The issue of language difference became caught up in the wider conflict: the Irish language joined glibs, brehons and pastoral nomadism as yet another element in the Elizabethans’ dystopic assessment of Gaelic Ireland; in turn, the promotion of English — and the linguistic colonisation which that entailed — assumed its place in their agenda of conquest. Leaving aside larger questions of policy and ideology, language itself — and the experience of language difference — was part of the texture of that encounter. Yet the question of precisely how exchanges across the language frontier were managed has been largely ignored. The misunderstandings between Elizabethan newcomers and the Gaelic Irish were, at their simplest level, literal.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 131 , May 2003 , pp. 257 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2003

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References

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31 Facs. nat. MSS Ire., pt 1, p. liv.

32 Humphrey Willis to Simon Willis, 25 May 1600 (Cal. S.P. Ire., 1600, p. 201); Docwra to privy council, 24 May 1600 (ibid., p. 195).

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39 ‘Sheane McCongawney’s Relation’, Sept. 1593 (Cal. Carew MSS, 1589-1600, p. 76).

40 Brigid, countess of Tyrconnell, to Chichester, Oct. 1607 (Cal. S.R Ire., 1606-8, pp 296-7); Hainle, Cathal Ó, ‘Flattery rejected: two seventeenth-century Irish poems’ in Hermathena, cxxxviii (1985), pp 5–27.Google Scholar

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43 ‘Information against Neale Garve’, 25 Apr. 1602 (Cal. S.P. Ire., 1601-3, pp 374, 376); Fenton to Cecil, 27 Nov. 1600 (Cal. S.P. Ire., 1600-01, p. 36).

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51 Duke to Fitzwilliam, 7 Oct. 1588 (P.R.O., SP 63/137/10 xii); Duke to Fitzwilliam, 1 May 1594 (P.R.O., SP 63/174/37 viii); Gardiner and St Leger to privy council, 16 Mar 1594 (Cal. S.P. Ire., 1592-6, p. 224).

52 In 1574 he offered to send his ‘secret interpreter’ to Turlough Luineach ‘until my coming unto him, which I hope shall do much good’ (articles of Capt. Piers, Nov. 1574 (Cal. Carew MSS, 1515-74, p. 491)).

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58 Fitzwilliam to Burghley, 23 June 1590 (Cal. S.P. Ire., 1588-92, p. 353); Docwra to Cecil, 2 Nov. 1600 (Cal. S.P. Ire., 1600-01, p. 13); paper on the causes of the rebellion, Dec. 1600 (ibid., p. 123).

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