Conducting replication in translation and interpreting studies: Stakeholders’ perceptions, practices, and expectations

Chao Han and Yueqing Wang
National University of Singapore | Xiamen University

Replication has the potential to substantiate tentative research claims and consolidate the existing evidence base. Translation and interpreting (T&I) scholars have argued for the need for replication and generated initial data on practices and attitudes towards replication. In three inter-linked studies described in this article, we shed further light on how replication is perceived, practiced, and expected by relevant stakeholders. We find that (a) most of the T&I journal editors surveyed support replication, but give lower priority to direct replication; (b) the overall prevalence rate of replication was 0.6% among 3807 research articles published in eleven leading T&I journals (2000–2022), and most of the identified replications were partial replication; and (c) the majority of the T&I researchers who participated in this research expected their study to be replicated based on various alterations. These findings help us develop an enhanced understanding of replication and formulate strategies to promote replication in empirical T&I studies.

Publication history

Date received: 26 October 2023

Date accepted: 14 April 2025

Published online: 19 May 2025

Table of contents

Replication refers to a principled and programmatic effort to reproduce an earlier study in order to ascertain the robustness of previous results observed in the original context (Porte 2012). Continuous, multiple replications that seek to corroborate or invalidate previous results play a pivotal role in building a strong, verifiable, and cumulative scientific evidence base (Makel and Plucker 2014). This is because one-time studies are only capable of generating tentative results, whereas successful replications at other times under other conditions have the potential to transcend the limits of individual research, transform insufficiently substantiated claims into a coherent body of knowledge, and contribute to cumulative science within a given discipline (Allen and Preiss 1993; Hubbard and Armstrong 1994).

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