The ever-changing face of Chinese Interpreting Studies: a social network analysis

As the discipline of Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) has continued to expand rapidly over the past twenty years, scientometric research has been increasingly applied to analyze its trends and patterns. Drawing inspiration from Social Network Analysis, this study aims to quantify academic research impact and identify patterns of influence at an institutional and regional level in Chinese Interpreting Studies (CIS), by seeking answers to the following questions: Which are the most influential publications? Which institutions and regions carry the most weight? How have their respective levels of influence evolved over time? By analyzing a near-exhaustive corpus of 59,303 citations from CIS literature, the study reveals that most of the influential publications are monographs and theoretical in nature, though many Chinese textbooks on interpreting are also highly influential. It also finds that an institution’s ranking in research productivity does not necessarily translate into high academic influence, and geographical proximity does not determine whether neighboring regions belong to the same research community.