Translation Strategies of Orientational Metaphors from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory —A Case Study of the 2026 Government Work Report

Abstract

The proposal of conceptual metaphor has driven metaphor research into the paradigm of cognitive linguistics. As a typical type of conceptual metaphor, orientational metaphors are no longer merely regarded as rhetorical devices, but cognitive modes for humans to understand abstract concepts based on spatial perception. Orientational metaphors consist of a source domain, a target domain, and mapping relations. Taking functional equivalence theory as the guiding framework for translation practice, this paper selects the official Chinese-Japanese bilingual version of the 2026 Government Work Report as the corpus, conducts a comparative analysis of Chinese and Japanese translations focusing on vertical orientational metaphors constructed by the words “high” and “low”, and summarizes three types of translation strategies. First, literal translation retaining the original vehicle preserves spatial imagery to achieve dual equivalence of form and function. Second, metaphor replacement adopts native Japanese vehicles to realize pragmatic functional equivalence. Third, metaphor omission strips rhetorical shells and delivers connotations through plain expressions to achieve deep communicative functional equivalence.