Translation Trends in 21st Century: A Corpus Based Descriptive Study of Selected Urdu Translations

Abstract

This study presents a bibliometric analysis of translation trends in Pakistan during the twenty-first century, focusing specifically on Urdu translations produced over the past two decades. Adopting a quantitative approach, the study examines five key variables: dominant genres, prevailing themes, years of publication of original works and their Urdu translations, and the original source languages. Data processing and visualization are conducted using Visual Operating System (VOS) viewer, with bibliometric maps generated for each variable to illustrate the most frequently occurring values. Findings reveal that the most commonly translated genres are non-fiction, novels, and short stories, followed by biographies, autobiographies, and poetry. Dominant thematic areas include history, feminism, and philosophy, with politics, postcolonialism, war, Islamic beliefs, power struggles, cultural discourse, and psychological issues also appearing prominently. The frequency of Urdu translations has notably increased in recent years, with a consistent upward trend observed from 2014 to 2020. Works published from as early as 340 BC to the present day have been translated into Urdu, though more recent publications show a higher rate of translation. English emerges as the most frequently translated source language, followed by Persian, Arabic, Russian, German, Hindi, Bengali, and Portuguese. The study concludes by suggesting that the dataset holds potential for further empirical research within the fields of linguistics and translation studies.