Lexical Cohesion in English-Chinese Business Translation: Human Translators Versus ChatGPT

Lexical cohesion involves the continuity of text on the level of lexis achieved through word choices; it embodies repetition, synonymy, and collocation (Halliday, 1985). This study attempts to elucidate the lexical cohesion and examine translation shifts in the English-Chinese translation of business texts. The English business texts are compared with two Chinese translations: one by human translators and the other by ChatGPT. The research is based on Halliday’s (1985) cohesion and Toury’s (2012) descriptive translation studies. The data of lexical cohesion are identified and collected manually in a parallel corpus. The analysis deals with the description of lexical cohesion and translation shifts. The research reveals that semantic meanings of the items of lexical cohesion are largely maintained in the English-Chinese business translation. Additionally, despite using translation methods like literal translation, addition, omission, and conversion in translating lexical cohesion, human translators make more translation shifts of lexical cohesion than ChatGPT.