Special Issue

Detective Work: Exploratory Data Analysis for the Literary-Historical Study of Translation in Periodicals 

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Abstract

The recent surge in digital tools and methods will undoubtedly prove invaluable to the scholarly field that lies at the intersection of Translation and Periodical Studies. From access to primary materials, to the collection of (meta)data and its analysis, they are bound to facilitate the researcher’s work, allowing for increasingly large corpora to be considered. Quantitative methods and data visualization are thus called to play a role in the development of this field of study, though this remains relatively uncharted territory due to both the novelty of the field itself and the reluctance of sectors of humanistic research to work with quantifiable data. In this context, I argue that Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA), as outlined by John Tukey (1970), is one of the most productive ways forward, as a philosophy of investigation that is especially compatible with humanistic research. It is my contention that the inductive, sandbox nature of the data exploration process, as well as the endless potentialities of the graphical representation of data, are ideally suited to apprehend the exceptional richness of periodical and translational texts, and therefore to reassess literary history. Through an illustrative case study, this article presents the principles of EDA and the tools derived from this approach that are most likely to be of use to the scholar of translation in periodicals. By doing so, it demonstrates that simple methods can yield valuable insights, and that the combination of qualitative approaches with exploratory analysis and data visualization has a key role to play in literary-historical research. 

Keywords: data visualisation, periodical metadata, Exploratory Data Analysis, mixed methods

How to Cite:

Popea, M., (2026) “Detective Work: Exploratory Data Analysis for the Literary-Historical Study of Translation in Periodicals ”, Journal of European Periodical Studies 11(1), 76-94. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/jeps.95460