The diplocultural effect of literary translation across French and Turkish cultural contexts

Literary translation can make another society’s places, institutions and practices available to readers without a diplomatic objective. This article introduces the diplocultural effect as an evidenced cross-border consequence of mediated cultural circulation and distinguishes it from cultural diplomacy, soft power and cultural transfer. A qualitative comparison examines André Gide’s Les Faux-Monnayeurs ( Kalpazanlar ) in Tahsin Yücel’s Turkish translation and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s L’Institut de remise à l’heure des montres et pendules ( Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü ) in Timour Muhidine’s French translation. The analysis considers retention, explicitation, accommodation and omission in examples involving literary memory, urban space, food, institutions and ritual. These comparisons identify textual conditions for cultural visibility and intelligibility. They do not establish changes in readers’ attitudes or behaviour. Differences in the contextual support supplied by the translations suggest an asymmetry of presumed familiarity that requires reception research. The framework separates textual potential from demonstrated effects and proposes further tests using reader responses and circulation records.