The present study sets out to offer an overview of literary translation as concept and product in Turkey in the 1940s. It places special emphasis on the activities of the state-sponsored Translation Bureau (Tercüme Bürosu) and contextualises the Bureau within the socio-cultural and political environment where it emerged, flourished and declined. The need to explore such as vast subject within the limits of a short essay has forced me to offer a general overview of the field rather than presenting a detailed critical analysis complete with exhaustive lists of all translations published and descriptions of individual translated texts. Although the focus of this study is the activities of the Translation Bureau as a major cultural institution in the shaping of a new literary canon for Turkey, the intention is also to reflect the diversity that prevailed in the literary translation market in the 1940s. The article also offers information about the activities of private publishers who have been unusually productive in the field of translated fiction throughout the whole Republican period.