This empirical-experimental study investigates the cognitive effort in the problem solving process guiding decision making in the translation of linguistic metaphors in a journalistic text by twelve professional translators from Chinese into Portuguese. The tools for the collection of the data were retrospective verbal protocols, and the Translog II program (Carl 2012), which logs keystrokes, mouse, and eye movements connected to a Tobii T120 eye tracker. Questionnaires were also used. For the quantitative analysis, a linear mixed effects regression model (LMER) was applied to the data set to indirectly measure cognitive effort for linguistic metaphor translation. The dependent variable was total production time. The controversial predictors were type of expression (metaphorical or literal), and translation strategy. For the qualitative analysis, retrospective protocols were analyzed for subjects’ verbalization of problem solving decisions regarding the linguistic metaphor under study. For the analysis and discussion, quantitative and qualitative data were triangulated, whereby parameters are proposed in order to enable the measurement of the problem solving process for the translation of linguistic metaphors. The outcomes of this study demonstrate that (1) there is no expression type effect on total production time, and (2) the predictor translation strategy is relevant to production time, which was confirmed by the retrospective protocol. This study contributes to Chinese Portuguese Translation Process Research methodologies, as well as to a deeper understanding of the complexity of cognitive processes underlying the translation of metaphors from Chinese into Portuguese, which is anticipated to contribute significantly to the teaching of metaphor translation.