Translation is communication across cultural (or, more specifically, linguistic) discontinuity. Communication occurs between, as well as within cultures or languages, and an argument can be made that cultural studies, whenever it addresses a culturally discontinuous field, shades into translation studies. That is the assumption at the root of this book, which states at the outset that "The history of translation in Ireland is the history of encounters"; and in that starting point lie both its strength and its weakness.