The theoretical framework of this article resides primarily with Nord’s funcionalist approach (1997), Hatim’s discourse analysis (1997), Barbe’s idea of irony (1995), and Brown and Levinson’s off-record strategies (1987). Using a corpus, we compiled, set limits and analyzed data by means of an empirical-descriptive qualititave methodology and a semantic, pragmatic perspective. The results show that translating irony was better conveyed in the target text in the cases where there was a breach of conversational rules. We conclude that this breach is a legitimate resource to transmit irony when translating literary texts.