Studies on translator and interpreter training: a data-driven review of journal articles 2000–12

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed the development of translator- and interpreter-training programmes at various levels worldwide. Researchers have paid increasing attention to translator and interpreter training but there is a dearth of meta-analyses of research in this field. There has been no systematic and comprehensive review since 2000. The aim of the current article, therefore, is to map the research in this field by constructing a database of publications on translator and interpreter training, covering major translation and interpreting journal articles during the period 2000 to 2012. The analysis of the database was conducted using a combination of scientometric methods, thematic analysis and corpus analysis tools. Both top-down and bottom-up thematic analyses were performed and a multilayer categorisation scheme applied. This article presents this analysis and also addresses the social-geographical distribution of the data entries, including those providing information on (co-)authorship, institution and country. A general picture of studies on interpreter and translator training since 2000 is shown. The database is intended to serve as a resource for translation and interpreting (T&I) researchers, providing them with the most up-to-date information on developments in T&I, problems with current T&I programmes and possible directions for future research.