Translating Irony in Popular Fiction: Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler published his first novel, The Big Sleep, in 1939. There are two Spanish translations of the novel, both titled El sueño eterno, one published in 1958 by Aguilar (Madrid) and the other in 1972 by Barral (Barcelona). This study analyzes irony in the two Spanish translations and concludes that both translations fail to reflect the degree of irony present in Chandler’s original, especially with respect to the translation of two key words, cute and giggle, and the dramatic effect of the novel’s climax is dampened as a consequence. Also, it is demonstrated that the 1972 version is, if not an outright plagiarism of the earlier 1958 version, at the very least a version which does not meet the criteria for originality.