Who translate Chinese academic works of the humanities and social sciences - a survey of the academic background of the government-funded translators

ABSTRACT

Bibliometric studies have mostly been concerned with journal articles, conducting surveys on the status quo of translation and interpreting studies in China. Very little research has been undertaken on a large scale to understand the practice-oriented projects funded by The National Social Science Fund of China. No study has been conducted on the academic background of the grantees of the projects, whom we call government-funded translators. Intending to fill this gap, this study presents a survey of the academic background of these translators in China. The analysis is mainly based on a survey of the projects funded by the Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences between 2010 and 2021 (the latest year of release). Through quantitative and qualitative content analyses, we mainly examine the academic background of Chinese government-funded translators in terms of gender, age, affiliation, title, academic degree, subject of education, geographical location, and thematic trend. Not only does this study present a portrait of the Chinese Academic Translation Project (hereafter referred to as CATP), especially the status quo of the Chinese government-funded translators, but it also gives insights into other related areas, and for future research intending to do bibliometric analysis in terms of methodology.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese academic works
• academic background
• humanities and social sciences
• government-funded translators
• bibliometric analysis

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences [Grant No. 20WZXB016]; the Center for Translation Studies of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies [Grant No. CTS202010]; the Humanities and Social Sciences Funds of Department of Education of Hubei Province [Grant No. 20G012]; the Self-determined research funds of CCNU from the colleges’ basic research and operation of MOE [Grant No. CCNU20TD008].

Notes on contributors

Hua Tan

Hua Tan lecturer, Ph.D., Postdoc, academic visitor at The University of Manchester during Dec. 2017 and Dec. 2018, research areas include studies of CTS (Corpus-based Translation Studies), literary translation, the history of translation theories, stylometry.