励志书籍是一种专门旨在激励人们上进、对人们解决现实中生活中如建立自信、人际关系、价值观等问题答疑解惑的书籍，对生活在快车道上的现代人，特别是对于我国这样处于转型社会的人来说，有着非常重要的意义。此类书在我国出现的历史较短，多为翻译作品，因此对这类书籍翻译的研究有着非常重要的实用性。但是由于种种原因，该类书的翻译在我国翻译学界没有受到关注。
英国翻译学家纽马克根据布勒对语言功能的分类将文本分为表达型、信息型、和号召型三类，并提出表达型文本适合语义翻译，而信息型及号召型文本适合交际翻译法（西南交大翻译学教授傅勇林先生将其译为‘达译’）。从语言功能来看，励志书籍具有表达、信息、及号召三种功能，因此其文本类型难以界定，如果将其主要语言功能视为后两者，按照纽马克的观点应适用交际翻译。本文作者从语言、文化因素等方面对《世界上最伟大的推销员》两个市场接受度差别很大的译本进行详细对比后发现，市场接受度好的译本主要采用了交际译法，市场接受度相对较弱的译本主要偏向于语义译法。但是励志书籍翻译中一个重要的问题就是如何传递源文中的隐含价值观，而案例中的交际译本存在着源文本价值观变形的问题，相比之下，语义译本在这个方面更胜一筹。因此本文作者认为励志书籍翻译在语言层面及文化层面的主要方面应采用交际译法，而涉及到源文价值观时，应采用语义译法，以达到译入语读者的可接受度（市场性）与价值观传递（社会功能）的平衡。
本研究的价值主要在于初步论证了交际翻译和语义翻译对励志书籍翻译的适用性和适用范围，在一定程度上丰富了对纽马克两种翻译方法的研究。同时借助英汉对比语言学的成果，为同类型书籍译本的对比提供了初步的框架。
本文由四章组成。第一章为前言，主要介绍了研究对象、研究动机、所涉理论、研究方法、章节安排等；第二章从词层面、句层面、文体方面对两个译本进行对比；第三章主要从文化词、隐含价值观的传递上对两个译本进行了对比；第四章为结论。

Motivational books are those that are written with the express intention to stimulate people forward by offering advice on practical issues such as confidence building, interpersonal relations, values, therefore are of great significance to fast-pace life, especially so for people in a transitional society like ours. These books have been in existence in Western countries for decades, but their history in China has been relatively short, and most works are translations. Therefore, research on their translation is of great practical and social significance, but this area has yet to receive any academic attention.
Peter Newmark, based on Bhuler’s model on language function, categorizes texts into expressive, informative and vocative types and proposes that the first one is to be treated by semantic translation and the second and third by communicative translation. A motivational book usually has all three functions in this framework, thus has a hybrid text type. If it is regarded as predominantly informative and vocative, then in Newmark’s view it should be translated communicatively. The present study, through a detailed contrast of two Chinese versions of The Greatest Salesman in the World with very different market acceptability, discovers that the commercially successful version was mostly a communicative translation and the other one tends towards semantic translation. However, the communicative version displays serious distortion of some values of the ST and, as an important function in a motivational book translation is the transmission of values, the semantic version is more successful in this regard. Therefore, the translation of a motivational book should be communicative in linguistic and non-value cultural dimensions, but semantic when dealing with values, in order to strike a balance between reader acceptance and un-distorted values transmission. It is hoped that this thesis can be valuable to the research of application of interpersonal meaning to translation studies.
The value of the study lies in the demonstrative analysis of semantic translation and communicative translation in respect of their applicability and scope thereof in dealing with motivational books, which can bring a measure of enrichment to research in these two approaches and provide a tentative framework for a contrastive study of similar books informed by English-Chinese contrastive linguistics.
The thesis is composed of four chapters. The first serves as the introduction of research objects, motivation, literature review, research methodology, and thesis organization. Chapter two registers a contrastive analysis of two versions in terms of lexical, clausal, and stylistic levels. Then we will have Chapter three which continues the discussion with a contrast with regard to cultural words and the transmission of values. Chapter four serves as the conclusion.