The internal distribution of radiative absorption in one-dimensional semitransparent slab exposed to collimated irradiation is determined by the ray tracing method, and the detailed computation formulae for the distribution of radiative absorption are deduced. It is found that the ray will be polarized by specular reflection of slab boundaries even if the collimated irradiation is unpolarized, and the extent of polarization increases with the internal reflection times. The effects of polarization on the radiative absorption are analyzed and the radiative absorption distributions are compared with those obtained from the case in which the effects of polarization are omitted. The results show that the large differences between re6ectances of perpendicular and parallel polarized components are the main causes resulting in errors of radiative absorption distribution. The polarization of incident beam has significant influences on the radiative absorption. Even for an unpolarized beam irradiated near Brewster's angle, omitting the effects of polarization will result in large errors, and the errors increase with the refractive index.