Academic translation plays an irreplaceable role in introducing western academic achievements to China, which is promoting academic development and exchanges. Comparing with other categories of translation, studies and criticism on academic translation are relatively inadequate. The impedimental factors could be attributed to the unclear concepts, which cause blurry objects and scope in academic translation criticism and research. This article therefore chooses to investigate the source, concept and evolution of “academic” by reviewing and analyzing of the history of academic development both in china and western world. Then the distinguishing characteristics of modern academics are excavated and described, which helps to clarify the conceptual connotation and extension of academic translation. Then, in order to define and distinguish the concept of academic translation both in a broad and a narrow way, this article proposes to take academic genre as the standard for classifying academic translation. In a word, the study is expected to lay a conceptual foundation for in-depth and systematic academic translation research, and indirectly contribute to improving the quality of academic translation and inspire the theoretical studies such as translation evaluation and criticism.