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Article published In:
Target
Vol. 35:2 (2023) ► pp.157–185

A scientometric review of research in Translation Studies in the twenty-first century

ORCID logo | Sichuan International Studies University | Nanyang Technological University
ORCID logo | Nanyang Technological University
The field of Translation Studies has expanded rapidly in the twenty-first century, largely due to the growing demand for translation and interpreting professionals. This study provides a scientometric review of Translation Studies to identify its developmental trends and patterns over the past two decades. Document co-citation analysis was conducted on 6007 journal articles published in the fifteen translation studies journals indexed in the Web of Science between January 2001 and December 2020. Twelve document co-citation analysis networks were generated and compared. Quantitative analyses, including temporal and structural metrics, confirmed the robustness and reliability of a network comprising ten discrete research clusters. A timeline view was generated to visualize how these clusters have evolved over time. Ten clusters were identified as major research subdomains in Translation Studies, namely translation competence, translation in conflict zones, translator training, collaborative translation, translation and society, language policy, post-editing and revision, media translation, the translation profession, and web localization. In addition, burst detection analysis identified the twenty most influential publications in this sample. Based on these findings, we discuss how the observed trends in each cluster contribute to further developments in Translation Studies. The implications for teaching, research, and theory are discussed and some methodological guidelines are proposed for future research.
Keywords: Translation Studies, co-citation analysis, burst, temporal metrics, structural metrics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Scientometrics in TS
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data source
    • 3.2Data analysis
      • 3.2.1Construction of DCA networks
      • 3.2.2Comparison of networks
      • 3.2.3Cluster analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Network comparisons
    • 4.2Cluster timeline view
    • 4.3Influential publications
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 October 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.20154.zhu
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