In many mouse plasmacytomas, the active c-myc gene has been truncated by chromosome translocation with the resultant severance of the protein-coding sequence from the normal promoter. Transcripts of such truncated c-myc genes were analyzed by Northern blotting, nuclease S1 mapping, primer extension assays and cDNA cloning. We conclude that transcription originates from multiple initiation sites on both c-myc coding and non-coding strands with the two-sets of transcripts derived from adjacent but essentially non-overlapping regions located greater than 1 kb from the translocation junction. In X63Ag8, where c-myc is translocated to the immunoglobulin C gamma 2b gene, the c-myc non-coding strand transcripts include the translocation junction and then splice directly into the gamma 2b CH1 exon. We propose that chromosome translocation activates a cryptic promoter in the first intron and that the heterogeneously initiated, bipolar transcription reflects the absence of a suitably placed TATA box element.