The objective of this master’s thesis is to investigate the production of irony in the literary work Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi and in its translation into English. In the theoretical part some fundamental theories on irony and the different approaches that have been adopted to explain it (Gricean theories and theories based on polyphony, e.g., the theories of Sperber and Wilson 2004, Clark and Gerrig 1984, Ducrot 1984, etc.) are presented. To distinguish ironic utterances from non-ironic ones we rely on Attardo's theory of contextual inappropriateness (2000) which explains and systematises the role of context in the production of irony. Furthermore, we present Alba Juez's (1995) theory, which states that irony can be produced through the violation of any of the four conversational maxims, using the off-record strategies, presented by Brown and Levinson (1987) in the framework of their politeness theory. In addition, the linguistic markers of irony collected by the GRIALE group (2006) are examined. Finally, we present some studies on irony carried out in the field of translation studies – the functional translation of irony by Christianne Nord (2010), the translation of irony from the discursive perspective by Hatim (1997) – and we look at some universal features of translated texts as explained by Laviosa-Braithwaite (1998). In the empirical part we analyse 24 concrete examples of irony with 5 different types of linguistic markers of irony, determining the contextual factors that make the utterance ironic, the maxims violated, and the off-record strategies used to produce the violation. In the English translation we observe whether irony is preserved or not and try to determine how the violation of maxims, the off-record strategies used, the communicative situation and the universal features of translated texts influence this. The results of the analysis of the examples show that irony is generally preserved in translation when the violation of the original maxim is preserved. If the violation of the original maxim is lost, this may be compensated by a violation of another maxim in order to preserve the irony. Linguistic indicators of irony have helped to recognise irony but were not always the condition for its preservation in the translation. The analysis of the communicative situation in the work has enabled us to explain irony as a phenomenon that can go beyond the frameworks of the story, which shows that irony is a complex phenomenon that requires to be studied by combining different theories, not just the theory of pragmatics.
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