In the first part of this article, I discuss two essential concerns regarding the analysis ofthe translation of literary irony, one of them conceptual and the other methodological.What is (literary) irony and how can it be defined? How can irony-shifts between thesource-text and the target-text most advantageously be described and analysed? In thesecond part of the paper a heuristic construct, the ironic effect, is proposed. Theadvantages of this methodological construct are enumerated: it enables to addresssimultaneously text-analytical and translational descriptive issues. The heuristicinstrument is then illustrated with excerpts taken from twentieth century Spanish-American literature and their French, American and Dutch translations.
