The Scientometric Approach as an Effective Tool of Analyzing the Current State of Translation Studies

Abstract

In today’s word, scientific knowledge increases on an ongoing basis; therefore, the challenge of analyzing the accumulated data turns into a task of paramount importance when considering scientific problems. This article focuses on the technical text and technical translation per se as they – in the context of the globalization and rapid technological development – should become the topic of meticulous and rigorous research. To measure bibliographic entries related to technical texts and translation, the scientometric approach is utilized in the article. The Bibliography of Translation and Interpreting (BITRA) has been selected as the material to draw upon. This bibliography is one of the few and the most comprehensive online bibliographic databases devoted to translation studies. It features publications by foreign and Russian researchers alike. The results obtained show that not more than 11% of the BITRA-indexed publications are devoted to technical translation, with the ratio of dissertations by foreign scholars covering technical translation aspects being 0.05% as compared to the overall number of 1997–2017 BITRA entries. No technical translation dissertations written by Russian researchers have been found. Two points of view on technical texts have been determined as some scholars consider special (legal, medical, economic, etc.) texts to be “technical” ones due to the presence of special terminology in such texts. Other researchers treat technical texts as special ones as they have something to do with the technological sector. Thus, the scientometric approach is an effective tool of analyzing bibliographic data. In addition, it should be noted that this method is also helpful in formulating practical guidelines for enhancing the search functionality of contemporary bibliographic databases.

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