Metadata Analysis on Translation of Chinese Literature Based on MCLC Database

As the world’s largest database documenting the translation of Chinese literature, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC) Resource Center reflects the historical panorama of Chinese literature’s global dissemination. Its complex and massive data urgently requires data-driven macro-scale descriptive research. Utilizing digital humanities approaches to conduct “distant reading” and metadata analysis of this database, this study aims to construct knowledge and disciplinary development trends based on the online resource, thereby revealing the overall characteristics and historical evolution of Chinese literature in translation. Findings indicate that since the 1980s the translation of Chinese literature has developed rapidly, yet widely translated authors and consistently active translators remain extremely limited; translated content exhibits both heterogeneity and universality, while genre distribution is markedly unbalanced; publication is concentrated in New York (USA), Beijing, Hong Kong (China), and London (UK), with core publishers being Columbia University Press, Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, and Foreign Languages Press—necessitating expansion of the publishing landscape beyond major cities in the English-speaking world.