Knowledge Structure And Research Focus In Computer-aided Translation

In recent decades,computer-aided translation(CAT)has become a major trend in the industry.Although much research has been done in the field,there is a lack of quantitative and computational approach to sum up the primary concepts of the domain and the trend of its future studies.This paper conducts a comprehensive analysis of research in computer-aided translation(CAT)using the scientomrtrics tool CiteSpace,which provides mainly two analytic techniques: information visualization and cluster analysis.With literature data downloaded from the Web of Science,the paper performs analyses in mainly three aspects: primary concepts,research focus and research trend in the field of CAT.The research data of CAT are 32 citing documents with 356 records of cited reference.It maps co-citation network of the main primary concepts of CAT by minimum spanning tree algorithm,which reveals the primary concepts in different stages of its development and the research front.The co-word network mainly identifies the knowledge structure and demonstrates the research focus towards CAT.And the co-word network analysis of machine translation contributes to the study of the trend of CAT.This paper yields the most important 13 primary concepts of computer-aided translation through co-citation analysis.They are machine translation,statistical translation,typing system,bilingual corpora,computer-aided translation tool,alignment,terminology,quality assurance,translation memory,TMX translation memory,collaborative workflow,crowdsourcing and translation education.These primary concepts are listed according to the order of development in computer-aided translation,providing an overall senario of computer-aided translation.This paper attempts to obtain the research focus and the recent research front of computer-aided translation using information visualization.In order to achieve this goal,it discusses the 6 largest clusters which contain the research focus of CAT through cluster analysis of co-word network.It also discusses the most active citer to the largest cluster from co-citation network analysis.These research focuses and research fronts are the application of computer-aided translation tools,language learning,TMX translation memory,annotation,translator computer interaction,empirical study,translation service provider(TSP),language service,cross cultural communication,computer mediated communication,professional translation,translation processes and observational study.The paper also discusses the research trend of computer-aided translation.The first prediction is that machine translation will play an important role in improving the performance of computer-aided translation.The second one is that more research efforts will be made on the study of the relationship between machine and translators in the future.The third one is that research on natural language processing integrated with translation memory will be a trend in the development of computer-aided translation.The last prediction of the paper is that the field of computer-aided translation will bring about more commercial value,as well as prosperity of language service.Theoretically,the primary concepts,the research focus and the research trend obtained in this study can be used as a guidance for research orientation in the field of CAT.