Paper short abstract

This paper explores how Hui Muslim translators negotiate gender, professional identity, and social reproduction and suggests that translation work illuminates broader processes of polarisation and differentiation, revealing how gendered sociality itself becomes a site of labour and value creation.

Paper long abstract

Within the context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, intensified mobility between Chinese businesses, tourists, and the Arab Gulf has expanded the demand for Chinese-Arabic translation work. This paper examines the gendered social life of Chinese–Arabic translation through the experiences of Hui Muslim translators, whose labour is shaped by intersecting expectations around gender, sociality, and value creation.

While both men and women participate, gendered norms within Hui communities continue to frame translation as intellectual work at and as social relations. Men are commonly positioned as breadwinners, whereas women’s participation is often perceived as transgressing and “masculinised” due to their public visibility and income-generating character. In contrast, within wider Chinese society, Chinese–Arabic translation is frequently constructed as a service-oriented and “feminised” form of labour, associated with assistance and support rather than professional expertise.

This divergence is shaped by two structural conditions. First, Chinese–Arabic translation is largely organised as project-based, precarious, and digitally mediated labour, blurring boundaries between home, mobility, and work. Second, many translators acquire Arabic through informal Islamic education, reflecting histories of ethnic and religious marginalisation and contributing to the devaluation of their skills within national labour hierarchies.

Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Dubai, UAE, this paper explores how Hui Muslim translators negotiate gender, professional identity, and social reproduction under conditions of mobility. It argues that translation work illuminates broader processes of polarisation, inequality, and differentiation, revealing how gendered sociality itself becomes a site of labour and value in contemporary remote work arrangements.