This paper examines in detail the Chinese cultural elements in contemporary Chinese literature, and analyzes the state of presentation and regional characteristics of Chinese cultural elements through data. A quantitative statistical method is used to examine the translation strategies adopted by the English translation of Red Sorghum for the cultural elements, and typical samples are selected and discussed in the light of translation theories. With the help of the explanatory structure model, the mutual influence relationship between the indicators of the cultural elements of the translation of Red Sorghum is analyzed, and a directed graph of the recursive structure of the indicator elements is constructed. According to the results, the translations of contemporary Chinese literature contain six different types of Chinese cultural elements, including character elements, object elements, landscape elements, conceptual elements, folklore elements, and other elements. The regions of East China (31.05%) and North China (26.11%) accounted for a larger proportion of the geographic regions. In the English translation of Red Sorghum, approximately 16%-35% of Chinese object elements were accurately translated. According to the explanatory structure model, the level of cultural output in the translation of Red Sorghum is directly influenced by object elements, landscape elements, conceptual elements, and folklore elements. The analysis process and results of this paper help promote research on the level of translated cultural output, which has certain theoretical reference significance and application value.