Lost in translation : Bibliometrisk domänanalys av translation studies

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to analyze the academic discipline translation studies; the analysis centers upon bibliometric aspects, and is carried out chiefly by means of quantitative methods, enabled by the databases Web of Science and Scopus as well as by the corpus-linguistic software Wordsmith; however, this quantitative focus is complemented by auxiliary qualitative means of investigation, i.e. a discourse-analytically oriented study of a corpus of domain-endemic reviews. A number of core journals are analyzed in order to show what and whom are cited in translation studies, and, furthermore, what adjacent domains hold sway over it; attention is also given to influential authors, regions and languages operating within the domain. It is shown that the domain under scrutiny is quite differentiated, even fragmentary; the term pluricentric is used to describe this tendency towards sprawling. No superior authors (in terms of publication frequency) emerge, which arouses the suspicion that the domain may be conditioned by a hierarchical divide between journals and monographs. Furthermore, it is clear that translation studies is a eurocentric domain: European languages dominate. This is, however, a contested state-of-affair; debates rage within the domain, evidencing a vibrant yet also discordant characteristic. The thesis also contributes to a meta-theoretical advancement within bibliometrics; it does so by showing the benefits and limitations of using quantitative tools to examine a domain located squarely within the humanities; the main contribution, however, lies in suggesting that qualitative methods are relevant to bibliometric endeavors, and in illustrating how such methods can be brought to bear on a somewhat overlooked genre, namely the scholarly review. Also worthy of note within this thesis is the cultural-studiesque critique of reified analytical categories within bibliometrics; such humanities-fueled critique is to be encouraged, and will hopefully flourish in future scholarly projects. This is a two years master’s thesis in the field of library and information science.