Abstract:

This paper addresses the scientific issue on the term evolution regularity of literary translation study in China, and uses the literature metrology to analyze the literary translation keywords in the CNKI database (1963—2016). Our experimental results show that the term evolution of literary translation study in China has gone through three stages. The first one ranging from 1963 to 1982 involves a small amount of papers, let alone the relevant terms. The second one, between 1983 and 2000, has seen a rising in the number of papers and a formation of multi-research focus featured by incremental new terms. The third stage, from 2001 to 2016, has witnessed a soaring amount of papers as well as transferred researching focuses, reaching to a booming term state. Currently, with Chinese literary translation research being on the rise, the terms for literary translation study are endowed with cultural connotation of times, nationality and diversity.

Key words: literary translation, term evolution, literature metrology