Two Decades of Audiovisual Translation Studies: A Bibliometric Literature Review

Abstract

Audiovisual Translation (AVT) studies have been among the burgeoning disciplines in translation studies. Although much progress has been made in AVT, there has been little scholarship heretofore to sketch a comprehensive understanding of the domain mapping using bibliometric analysis. Based on a total of 1,424 journal articles collected from the Web of Science Core Collection (SSCI, A&HCI, and ESCI) and Scopus from 2002 to 2022, the publication trends, research progress, research hotspots, and research frontiers were analyzed and visualized using CiteSpace and VOSviewer. The results of this study show that research on AVT has experienced exponential growth in the last two decades and is likely to follow an upward trend in the future. Topics including subtitling, dubbing, audio description, reception, and media accessibility have been frequently explored; and active researchers from Europe and Iran, as well as productive institutes in Europe, the USA, and China, with publications in influential journals, have contributed greatly to AVT studies. The historical development of AVT studies also implies an interdisciplinary trend. These findings provide insights into AVT studies, with a comprehensive overview, which is of great reference significance for researchers in understanding the past achievements of the discipline and carrying out their future research.