A bibliometric investigation on didactic proposals in interpreter training (2001-2020)

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an overview of didactic proposals in interpreter training from 2001 to 2020 based on the results of a pre-registered, bibliometric study. The specific aims are: (1) to characterise bibliometric patterns of publications containing didactic proposals in interpreter training both synchronically (for the whole period) and diachronically (in five-year periods); (2) to characterise these proposals both synchronically and diachronically, and (3) to describe synchronically how the aspects being trained and/or assessed in such proposals have been operationalised. The corpus of publication records was extracted from BITRA, and TSB was consulted to expand it. The final database contained 668 documents, and 351 of them included an abstract. Keywords were extracted from the abstracts to characterise didactic proposals. Keywords were analysed using keyword analysis and graphically represented with keyword network visualisations generated with VOSviewer. Results show a tendency to bring interpreter training closer to technological and professional changes over time and a clear use of socioconstructivist methods with a particular interest in developing students’ metacognition. The paper concludes with a discussion of its limitations and possible ways to provide more nuanced overviews of didactic proposals in interpreter training.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpreter training
• didactic proposals
• bibliometrics
• keyword analysis
• keyword visualisation network

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Javier Franco Aixelá for sharing the BITRA database so that this study could materialise and to Nicoletta Spinolo for helping me with the interpretation of the results.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The pre-registration of this project can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QFE8R

2. The Bulletin of the Conference Interpreting Research Information Network edited by Daniel Gile was initially considered as a possible source of data. However, the Bulletin has a strong focus on conference interpreting and on research, while the aim of the study was to cover interpreter training and in all possible modes.

3. Depending on the number of keywords and connections in a network, not all keyword labels are visible in the screenshot pictures offered here. However, the necessary files and instructions to generate the networks that will be presented in this section using VOSviewer, which can be downloaded for free, can be found here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10830124. VOSviewer allows for interacting with the network and obtaining more details than in the screenshot versions included in this paper.