Translating foreign academic works into Chinese is very important to academic resources and development in Taiwan. However, this need also poses many questions. Which books in which academic fields need to be translated the most? How many translated foreign academic works are actually published every year? What kind of distribution do the translated publications enjoy in various academic fields? Do full and part-time translators perform differently from each other when translating them? The most important question is: Which translated academic books are most needed for Taiwan's future academic development? With these questions in mind, the purposes of the present study are to investigate (a) in which academic fields is there a high demand for the translation of foreign academic works into Chinese, (b) publishing status of those translated academic publications, (c) translation models used in the translation of foreign academic works into Chinese.
Document analysis, statistical analysis and focusing group interview were adopted for this study to analyze the following sources: (a) Documents and book lists from the National Institute for Compilation & Translation (NICT, 2002-2011) and the National Academy for Educational Research (NAER, 2011). Hundreds of books were recommended every year during this period. They were first recommended by college teachers, researchers, and publishers and then reviewed by experts recommended by the NICT or the NAER, (b) Documents and book information from the NICT (2002-2011) and the NAER (2011). The book information refers to such information as book names, content categories, publishers, translators, the original and translated text words, and amount of time used for translation.
The results showed that domestic demand for the translation of foreign academic works into Chinese fell into five main categories, such as education, humanities, social and behavioral sciences, life sciences, and natural sciences. Most of these scholarly books recommended by university teachers and institute researchers were written in English. As for translated academic publications, most of these scholarly books under translation fell into social and behavioral sciences, and English was the most original language text. Full-time translators allied with professionals in the field had better translation and review performance. Finally, some suggestions for future translations of foreign academic works into Chinese are given.
