Towards a Descriptive Map of Translation Studies Based on MA Thesis

As a result of the rapid development of translation studies, a growing body of theses has been defended in Iranian universities in the past decade. In spite of the growing academic productions, there is not a comprehensive study on the matters related to content. The study aims at giving a picture of the path followed by MA students and tries to examine and categorize the topics covered by the studies. To do this, document analysis was used as the methodology. A database was consisted of 229 theses defended between 2004 and 2014 at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and Allameh Tabatabaei University. All the theses archived in the universities were studied and described. The thematic analysis of the theses resulted in 29 main categories. Using the analysis and inspired by turns of translation studies, all of the theses were inserted into different translation research areas. The result was six main areas and an additional miscellaneous. An additional result of the analysis was a map that was compared and contrasted with Holme's map of translation studies to see similarities and differences. Moreover, the results show that almost all research areas of Holme's map have been covered by the theses.