Abstract
Training has been an essential theme in applied translation and interpreting (T&I) studies. Along with the rapid increase of translator and interpreter training programs all over the world, research in this area has seen some robust development in the new millennium . This study , through a meta-review of pedagogical research published in the journal Meta: The Translators’ Journal in the last 15 years, provided an overview of the current research themes and methods applied in this field . A combination of research methods , which included publication counting , thematic analysis and title analysis, were employed in the study. Findings suggest that pedagogical research in Meta is featured by the theme of “teaching” (as compared to “learning” and “assessment”) and is dominated by empirical designs. Through a comparison with pedagogical research in a larger corpus of nine other T&I journals, the study indicates that Meta presents a similar general landscape. However, it was found that the journal has some particular subthemes that are significantly different from other T&I journals. Through this exercise of meta-review and comparison of Meta and other academic journals , the study sheds light on the features of pedagogical research in T&I and may provide implications on the future development in this field.
The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.
(Eliot 1921: 44)
Due to operational feasibility concerns and in order to conduct parallel comparisons with other journals, this study only includes articles published in the English language in the journal.
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Notes
- 1.
Some preliminary analysis and results of the study was reported in a conference paper, the abstract of which was published as Pan et al. (2015).
- 2.
As shown in Chap. 2, Meta also contributed the largest number, among the ten selected T&I journals, of article entries on T&I research as well as on T&I training in the large corpus (see Yan et al. 2015). Therefore, the journal is worthy of an in-depth study of its features of pedagogical research, for its significant number of relevant studies and for its emphasis on pedagogical research in history (see Sect. 5.1.2).
- 3.
The reasons for choosing English language articles and AHCI/SSCI indexes have been listed in the previous chapters of the book and hence are not repeated here. Among these nine journals chosen for comparison, The Interpreters’ Newsletter was not AHCI/SSIC listed but still chosen for its significance as the earliest academic journal dedicated to IS (see Gile 2009; Pan et al. 2017).
- 4.
- 5.
The basic framework of the research method classification, resulting from reviewing a number of studies on research methodology and the thematic analysis of entries in the present corpora, was constructed mainly on the basis of three existing systems: (1) Gile (1998), who categorized research methods in IS into theoretical and empirical, the latter including observational and empirical research methods; (2) Williams and Chesterman (2002), who divided research in TS into conceptual and empirical, the latter further classified into naturalistic and experimental research; and (3) Seliger and Shohamy (1997), who suggest that research methods should be classified by parameters including the synthetic/analytical dichotomy, the heuristic/deductive dichotomy, degree of control & explicitness of data collection procedures, and researcher subjectivity. The classification scheme also incorporated the results of thematic analysis of research methods in previous data-driven reviews of T&I journal articles (Yan et al. 2013, 2015; Pan et al. 2017).
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Prof. Sylvie Vandaele and Prof. Georges Bastin for their comments on an early draft of this article. This article was partially supported by the Hong Kong Baptist University FRG Grant [FRG1/15-16/058].
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Yan, J.X., Pan, J., Wang, H. (2018). Beyond the Landscape “of Light”: A Review of Pedagogical Research Articles in Meta (2000–2014). In: Research on Translator and Interpreter Training . New Frontiers in Translation Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6958-1_5
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