<p>This article proposes a solution to compensate for the lost readability as a result of lexical foreignness in English-translated texts. This research draws on the concept of cognitive map to investigate the lexico-contextual features that facilitate the readability of foreignized or exotic items. A cognitive map refers to the mental representation of a location through processing spatial structures, relations, and other information. The more effectively a text aids readers in forming cognitive maps to remember the locations of words or phrases, the better the readers can comprehend the text, and the more readable the text is. This article explores which lexico-contextual features of exotic items contribute to the development of cognitive maps, including typographical cues, contextual cues, and lexical distribution. We create a parallel corpus of 13 Ge Sa-er stories from <i>Ge Sa-er Wang</i> and their English translation to collect exotic items. By recounting the ancient heroic tales of King Ge Sa-er, <i>Ge Sa-er Wang</i> plays a significant role in preserving and advancing the understanding of minority cultures. The corpus-based data are utilized to explicate the lexico-contextual features that provide visual or contextual cues for improving cognitive map construction. The results reveal that such lexico-contextual features as appropriate contextual distribution, low lexical density, and typographical salience are conducive to building cognitive maps of the exotic items within translated texts. The contributions of this study include adding the concept of cognitive map to the analysis of lexical complexity in improving the readability of translated texts and demonstrating how lexico-contextual features can compensate for the loss of readability.</p>