1 Introduction

This section introduces the Outline as an important political education text, highlighting the significance of its translation into foreign languages for disseminating Chinese educational concepts. It notes the high difficulty of translating political terminology and, using the French version of the Outline as an example, proposes a three-dimensional approach of "Semantic Comprehension—Functional Reconstruction—Stylistic Modulation." The aim is to explore effective mechanisms for reconstructing political terminology in French, balancing political accuracy, normative standards, and acceptability, thereby bridging research gaps and enriching the empirical foundation.

2 Research Background and Framework

Firstly, it elaborates on the multiple functions and lexical features of political texts, pointing out that translating political terminology requires not only accurate meaning correspondence but also the re-expression of political logic, discourse style, and functional attributes. It emphasizes the importance of establishing translation principles. Subsequently, through a literature review, it outlines two paths in domestic research on translating political texts: macro-principles and micro-strategies. It notes that macro-level research often remains at the stage of principle construction, while micro-level research focuses on case studies, with a lack of systematic analytical pathways bridging the two. It also highlights the insufficiency of related research in the French language context. Following this, it proposes three principles for translating political terminology: prioritizing political accuracy, maintaining functional orientation, and ensuring systemic correspondence. Based on these, it constructs the three-dimensional analytical framework of "Semantic Comprehension—Functional Reconstruction—Stylistic Modulation," laying a theoretical foundation for subsequent research.

3 The "Deconstructive Logic" of Translating Political Terminology

This section delves into the "deconstructive logic" of translating political terminology, emphasizing that the translation process must first involve semantic parsing and concept identification to clarify the attributes and logic of political terms, followed by functional reconstruction to re-present the original text's argumentation mechanisms, policy relationships, and value hierarchies in French. Simultaneously, attention must be paid to the normative and solemn nature of French political discourse to ensure the target text's style aligns with the source text and to avoid misinterpretation. Regarding semantic comprehension, it points out that political terminology is characterized by high conciseness and polysemy, requiring translators to balance aspects such as linguistic understanding and contextual judgment to accurately convey political connotations. In the functional reconstruction part, it analyzes the differences between Chinese and French political discourse, illustrating through examples how to transform Chinese rhetorical structures into French logical structures, achieving "variation while preserving meaning." Stylistic modulation focuses on balancing the preservation of political stylistic features with enhancing cross-cultural acceptability, using appropriate expressions to reconstruct the original text's political solemnity and argumentative logic.

4 The "Reconstruction Strategies" for Translating Political Terminology

This section explores in depth the "reconstruction strategies" for translating political terminology, noting that this process is a multi-layered reconstruction activity involving "meaning—function—style," and emphasizes the critical roles of semantic orientation, policy function, and political style in achieving expressive equivalence in the target language. Based on the French translation practice of the Outline, it discusses in detail four representative strategies in translating political terminology.

Regarding the translation strategies for core concepts, core concepts, as key elements in political discourse, possess characteristics such as high generality, prescriptive nature, as well as polysemy, metaphoricity, and ideological load. Translators must not only grasp the basic semantics accurately but also deeply understand the policy context, discourse traditions, and political functions to achieve appropriate meaning reconstruction. For example, there is no exact equivalent in French for the concept "ideological and political education." Translators adopted "éducation morale et civique," which aligns more closely with its connotations, emphasizing moral norms and civic responsibility while conforming to French readers' reception habits. Another example is the highly abstract, institutionalized, and policy-laden term "talent" (rencai), which in French requires expression through more concrete human qualities, such as "former des jeunes compétents" (cultivating competent young people), to enrich expression and avoid misunderstanding.

Concerning adaptation strategies for linguistic style, the linguistic style of political texts is highly conventionalized and procedural, employing specific rhetorical devices to enhance persuasive power and appeal. However, significant differences exist between the linguistic styles of Chinese political texts and French political discourse. Chinese tends toward concise, symmetrical, rhythm-focused "imagistic" expression, while French emphasizes logical structure, conceptual abstraction, and textual coherence. Therefore, adapting linguistic style requires seeking a balance between faithfulness to the original text's political functions and the pragmatic norms of the target language. The French translation practice of the Outline indicates that adaptation can be achieved through structural transformation from rhythmic to logical rhetoric, reorganization from dynamic expressions to abstract concepts, and recoding from formal rhetoric to pragmatic functions. For instance, in translating the "Four Haves" good teacher concept, the translator distilled four core quality concepts and expressed them using common French abstract noun phrase structures, while selecting highly general and rhetorically charged adjectives to modify the nouns, enhancing the translation's appeal and solemnity.

Regarding presentation strategies for cultural imagery, cultural imagery is the most culturally distinctive and aesthetically valuable expressive resource in political discourse, prone to meaning deviation in cross-cultural translation. When handling source-language cultural imagery, translators must, based on an understanding of the source culture's connotations, reasonably decide which images to retain, which to transform, or which to omit. In translating the Outline, the handling of cultural imagery exhibits three typical approaches: moderately retaining images with universal symbolic meaning or those easily understood cross-culturally; achieving functional equivalence through abstraction or explanatory conversion for images with high cultural load but clear functions; and employing weakening or substitution strategies for images likely to cause misunderstanding or cultural barriers. For example, the culturally specific metaphor "entering a room of orchids, one becomes fragrant over time," which carries universal value, was retained in the French translation. By incorporating appropriate foreignizing elements, it enhanced the cultural depth of the translation, achieving unity in functional equivalence and aesthetic equivalence.

Additionally, it touches upon modulation strategies for stylistic features and ideological connotations, though specific details are not elaborated in the provided text. Overall, the systematic organization of these strategies helps present a more comprehensive view of the regular practical pathways in translating political texts at the lexical level, offering theoretical guidance and practical references for translating political terminology.

5 Conclusion

This section summarizes the complexity of political discourse translation, emphasizing it as an exchange of culture and values. Based on the French translation practice of the Outline of General Secretary Xi Jinping's Important Expositions on Education, it analyzes the semantic complexity and cross-cultural sensitivity of translating political text terminology from four dimensions: core concepts, linguistic style, cultural imagery, and ideological connotations. It points out that translating political terminology requires maintaining a balance between political accuracy and cross-cultural acceptability. Translators need to possess multiple competencies to achieve the unity of political accuracy, normative standards, and acceptability. Simultaneously, it identifies areas for optimization in the French translation at the conceptual, discursive, and stylistic levels, emphasizing that translating political texts requires meticulous modulation at the micro-level.