This study (a) examines the association of a specific verbal style, known in English as camp, with male homosexual characters in Anglo-American post-war fiction, and (b) considers the translation of that style into French in a corpus of five key 'gay texts' from the late 1970s. It is hypothesized that camp (and parodic femininity) presents a complex problem for translators in that, while it is manifest in comparable formal (stylistic and pragmatic) devices in both English- and French-language texts, it can be seen to fulfill different functions in the literary and cultural contexts of post-war France, Britain and the United States. These functions relate specifically to issues of gay subjectivity, community (and subculture) building, political resistance and efficacy, and the intercultural model of 'gay' developed in the late 20th century largely through the global influence of American cultural production and economic hegemony.