Between “forwardability” and “authenticity”: Writing style as a commercial asset in mediating communication on transnational dating websites

- Transnational matchmaking agencies have privileged access to matchmaking websites.
- Translators in transnational matchmaking function as stylistic gatekeeping powers.
- A cultural divide is enlarged to legitimize companies' monopolizing position.
- Website affordances influence practices of representation and perception.

This article investigates how discourses on transnational matchmaking sites featuring so-called “Russian brides” are produced behind the online scenes: who participates in the creation of these gendered and ethnicized presentations, how and why? In former Soviet Republics, matchmaking websites are predominantly operated by marriage agencies. These agencies have a significant impact on how women are represented online. The data for this study derive from long-term ethnography in one agency and qualitative inquiry in three other agencies in Russia. The chain of adaptations in self-presentations is analyzed by comparing letters that were originally written by female clients in Russian (a corpus of 2359 anonymized letters) with the English standardized online self-ads composed by agency staff on the basis of these letters. The analytical gaze is shaped by the author's participant observation activities as a “translator” in the case agency and office documents that instruct personnel and clients on what and how to write to an audience of “foreign men”. By integrating a corpus-based discourse analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, linguistic adaptations are related to meso- and macro-level contextual variables. This study offers new insights on how language is commodified in daily interaction to comply with standards established by specific sites, and especially with global discourses on femininity and trust in online environments.