A Tentative Study On How To Improve The Integrity Of A Translation-an Analysis On The Translation Of Two Chapters Of A History Of American Business

As an interdisciplinary publication that covers the fields of business and history,A History of American Business depicts the development course of American business.With its substantial content, vast information and many technical terms, this bookposes several challenges to its translator. In addition, there is still few translationworks regarding the subject of American business in China. Therefore, this selectionof translation material boasts not only ingenuity but also practical value.Unlike literary works, non-literary works lay emphasis on the objectivity andformality of language, the authenticity of cases, the accuracy of expression and logicalconsistency. This characteristic of non-literary works requires that the translatorshould attach great importance to the translation’s integrity, which means the cohesivedevices of the translation should be compact; the translation should maintain semanticcoherence; and there is no contradiction in the translation. Only in this way can thetranslation of non-literary works meet the requirements of quality.As an important aspect to measure the translation’s quality, the integrity of a textis closely related to many factors, and cohesion and coherence in discourse is one ofthe most crucial factors. By analyzing the lexical chains, the translator can gain athorough understanding of the lexical cohesion in the source text, thus laying a solidfoundation for the improvement of the translation’s integrity. By employing thetopic-comment orientation strategy, thematic progression pattern and so on, thetranslator can further improve the integrity of the translation.Based on the theory of cohesion and coherence in discourse, this report exploreshow to improve the integrity of a translation by analyzing the translation of tworepresentative chapters of A History of American Business. By means of case study as well as comparison and contrast of different versions of the translation, this report notonly summarizes a few approaches to improve the translation’s integrity, but analysestheir functions as well. As a result, this report possesses a certain degree ofsignificance on the translation of non-literary works.