Language at the Bar: Law and the Interpreter in Ireland

Prof Margaret Kelleher, Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama, University College Dublin, author of The Maamtrasna Murders: Language, Life and Death in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, will deliver the talk "Language at the Bar: Law and the Interpreter in Ireland, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives" on 25 October in Vigo, 10am, Salón de Actos, Facultade de Filoloxía e Tradución (FFT)

Abstract.- In 1882, Myles Joyce, an Irish monolingual, was wrongfully convicted and executed for the murder of his neighbour in Maamtrasna, a rural district in Western Ireland. His trial is now infamous for the failure of the court to provide him with proper interpretative services, and is the central subject of James Joyce’s essay ‘Ireland at the Bar’(1907). This paper will examine the role of the interpreter in the Maamtrasna trials and explore the significance of this historic event in relation to controversies regarding interpretative services in contemporary Ireland.

This activity has been funded by University of Vigo (Facultade de Filoloxía e Tradución, and PhD programme in Advanced English Studies) and reserach project "INTRUTHS:Cultural Practices of Silence in Contemporary Irish Fiction" FFI2017-84619-P AEI/FEDER (PI M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera).