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Letter to the Editor
Translation studies has become an established area of inquiry. The scientific investigation of relevant issues began around the second half of the past century (Munday, 2012, p. 10). It started to grow rapidly, universities in most developed countries turned to design academic courses by offering certificates and degrees in training translators and translation educators (Venuti, 2000, p.1). By the end of the 20th century, this field of study had already flourished as a new academic major (Gentzler, 2014). But systematic attempts were not made to explore relevant trends and topics, for which the potentials of scientometrics and bibliographics are suggested (Gile, 2015), although few studies can be found regarding trend analysis (e.g. Dong & Chen, 2015; Wang et al. 2019). In fact, scientometrics dwells on quantitative tracing of historical patterns of how scientific documents emerge in journals, books, and other publications. Indeed, it offers a better insight into scientific trends in a specific field of study (Miners & Leydesdorff, 2015). By drawing on bibliographic methods and co-occurrence patterns, it further facilitates mapping those trends and the underlying movements (Leydesdorff & Vaughan, 2006, p. 1).