Searching for some relevance answers to the problems raised by the translation of irony

Abstract

Even though the approaches and definitions of irony have not been historically homogeneous, it has generally been argued that it implies a certain discrepancy in meaning, be it between what is said and what is meant, or between attitudes such as blame and praise, to refer only to some of the most recurrent tendencies. Moreover, recent literary and pragmatic views on the interpretation of irony seem to have agreed upon the role played by inference, thus stressing the fact that traditional models of communication fall short to account for the dexterity of possible meanings that may be conveyed by such a proteic resource. It may be said that the inferentially based relevance approach to communication has been offering fruitful insights into the understanding of irony. Thus, the relevance studies on irony go back in time more than twenty years so far, and new proposals keep on being put forward (1978-). However, perhaps not so many suggestions have been made on the problems and possible recurrent traits in the translation of irony. The present paper sets out to explore some of the problems that have been traced in the translation of irony. The relevance analyses of irony and of translation will then be sketched, with a view to testing whether the relevance proposals on communication and translation can shed some light upon these issues.