Publication trends and co-citation mapping of translation studies between 2000 and 2015

Literature regarding translation studies has increased rapidly in recent decades, yet there have been few empirical studies to investigate the research context of translation studies at the global level. A bibliometric analysis was carried out in this research to probe the current status and the research themes of translation studies papers published between 2000 and 2015 in all journals indexed by the Web of Science database. Bibliometric methods and knowledge visualization technologies were employed to thoroughly investigate publication activities, geographic distributions, core literature, and the distinctive research areas of translation research. The study distinguishes three research areas in translation studies, namely, theoretical translation studies, translation and interpreting training, and descriptive translation studies. The dissemination of knowledge in these areas is realized by publication sources specializing in language and linguistics, applied linguistics and pragmatics, phonetics and acoustics, and translation and interpreting. The core literature in translation studies has been focused to focus on linguistic theories, research methodology, theoretical models, interpreting, and new perspectives. This study provides researchers with several useful insights to better understand developments in translation studies.