Audio visual translation has been a hot topic in translation studies in recent years. In an attempt to get an overview of audio visual translation studies(AVTS) in China, this paper, by employing CiteSpaceV, a scientometric tool, analyzes the metadata of all the related research papers, which fall into the category of AVTS, published between 1997 and 2016 in CNKI. With an aim to uncover the diachronic evolvement and current situation of AVTS in China, the author probes into the number of articles published annually, the major magazines that carry the papers, the major research areas of AVTS, high-frequency keywords, the authors and research institutions that turn out most papers. Eventually, with the assistance knowledge graphs, the author comes up with the following findings: a large quantity of research papers of AVTS have been published, but most of them are with unsatisfactory qualities; the research areas are largely limited and empirical approaches are seldom adopted. Therefore, the future research should pay greater attention to conducting interdisciplinary and empirical studies. This paper hopefully facilitates audio visual translation studies in China．