Translation for Transformation: Female Identity Construction by The Woman’s Messenger During the Republic of China

The Woman’s Messenger, or Nüduo in Chinese Pinyin, the first Chinese Christian women’s journal founded by the Christian Literature Society for China, played a pivotal role in promoting women’s emancipation and constructing female identities during the Republican period of China. Published under the direction of American missionary Laura M. White, the journal fostered a group of outstanding female translators, who, guided by a collective commitment to “self-expression”, employed translation as a transformation means to reconstruct women’s independent identity. This study begins with the journal’s founding, encompassing its historical background, editorial objectives, contents and target readership, arguing that it provided an important platform for integrating Christianity with feminist ideas. Employing close reading and the approach of translator behavior criticism, it analyzes how the female translators strived to construct three forms of female identity through translation in light of Manuel Castells’ identity building theory: the legitimizing identity of female Christians, the resistant identity of modern family women, and the project identity of female patriots. It further examines how translation in The Woman’s Messenger transformed the language, style and content of the source texts to facilitate identity construction, including shifts from classic to vernacular Chinese, the adaptation of Western narratives to Zhanghuiti novels, and a move from neutrality to affirmative female self-expressions. Through this case study of The Woman’s Messenger, this research is anticipated to contribute to feminist translation studies, female identity construction, and Christian studies via Republican-era print media, illuminating the interaction among feminist translation, female identity and Christian journals.