by Judy Murpny

Australian born Ariel Killick didn’t study Irish at national or secondary school, nor did she do a primary university degree in the language. Despite that, she now works as a translator here in Ireland, mostly translating English documents into Irish.

But any observation that this self-taught Irish speaker would put us natives to shame with her fluency in our ‘mother tongue’ is met with a swift rejoinder.

“Don’t say that! It’s not my intention to put anyone to shame.”
Ariel, who is also an accomplished street performer, is featuring in a new 15-part series on Raidió na Gaeltachta entitled Ar an gCoigríoch (In Foreign Parts) which can be heard every Saturday morning at 10 am.

The series features interviews with 15 foreigners, from Hungary to Japan, from Australia to Wales to Germany, who have made Ireland their home, and who will be speaking about their experience of living here. Some have lived here for 40 years; others are relative newcomers but all share a passion for Ireland and our history and culture, and all speak fluent Irish.

Ariel’s interview is being broadcast this Saturday, March 13 and it promises to be a cracker. The straight-talking Australian observes that she has learned enough during her 10 years in Ireland “not to be bothered saying what I really think”, but she’s so direct that anybody listening to her will get the picture.

In reality, Ariel has a huge grá for Ireland and has immersed herself in the cultural life of her adopted country, as well as in the more prosaic world of translation.

At present, she’s completing a Masters degree in Legal and Legislative Translation at NUIG’s Acadamh Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge in Carraroe. In addition, she’s moving her belongings from Dublin to Galway City as she prepares to move here permanently, having been temporarily based in Carraroe for the past few months. She’s learning how to drive and she’s busy preparing a group of fire-eating stilt-walkers for a street spectacle at Dingle’s Féile na Bealtaine in May.

She’s under pressure, she says honestly, but you sense that this is a woman who can handle pressure.

Her ancestry is a mix of Irish, Scottish and English and she grew up in a mixed race area of Sydney, so she was aware of multiculturalism and heritage from a very young age.

In the 1990s there was a lot of discussion about Aboriginal rights in Australia, while there was also talk about the country becoming a republic.

Ariel was very politically aware and the notion of being part of a republic drew her to her Irish rather than Scottish ancestry. In her final year at school, she decided to learn the language, joining a speaking group in Sydney. Within nine months she had sat the 1996 Leaving Cert Pass and Honours papers. An Irish friend, who was fluent in the language, corrected them for her and she excelled. She applied for a scholarship to study the language, but failed in that bid . . . even now, she can’t believe she had the temerity to apply for it. But, she adds, here she is 13 years later, studying for her MA in NUIG.

She spent a brief time in university in Sydney in the mid 1900s where she studied musical composition for a period, before moving to Ireland in 1998 where she worked on a current affairs programme for Dublin’s Raidió na Life – she had previously worked in Australia for state broadcaster SBS, researching and producing Irish language programmes.

Ariel returned to Australia after four months, but came back here in 2000. She enhanced her qualifications with a post-grad course in Irish and Applied Translation at GMIT in 2003 and became an Irish citizen last year, which, she says, was as much to do with practical as emotional reasons – as a non-Eu citizen she needed a permit to work here.
 

Her list of qualifications includes a post-graduate diploma in Community Arts from the National College of Art and design, and in addition to her translation work, she also has a career as a street performer. During a lean period in translation work, after she arrived here a friend told her she’d make money face painting on stilts.
Sounds mad, but it worked.

She did a course and worked at it, and then did some birthday party clowning around Dublin. The rest is history. She trained in fire eating, which she now combines with stilt-walking. She also ran an Irish language stilt-walking street performance troupe in 2000, which received a state grant and created high drama at festivals all over the country.

Involvement in the arts is vital for her, she says.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.