How cultural confidence shapes college students’ translation performance of culture-loaded words: quantitative evidence from China

College English Test Band 4 (CET-4) now prioritizes translating culture-loaded words to evaluate students’ cross-cultural proficiency, and cultural confidence is a key factor in cross-cultural communication, yet there is little quantitative evidence tying it to real-world translation performance. To address this gap, this study aims to explore cultural confidence level of contemporary college students and its impact on the translation performance of Chinese culture-loaded words. We constructed the research corpus using materials from the translation section of the CET-4. Data were collected from 100 English majors and 88 Chinese majors via a mixed design involving questionnaires and translation tests. Analyses included PLS-SEM for examining variable relationships and group comparisons across majors. Results show that: (1) college students display a moderate level of cultural confidence; (2) Chinese majors have a significantly higher level of cognition of socialism with Chinese characteristics and their own culture than English majors, while English majors have a higher level of cognition of foreign cultures than Chinese majors; (3) a significant correlation between college students’ recognition of Chinese socialism culture and their translation performance of Chinese culture-loaded words (p < 0.01, β = 0.471)). The adjusted structural equation model indicates that college students’ cultural confidence explains 22.2% of the variance in translation performance (R² = 0.222), reflecting a moderate predictive effect. With a standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) of 0.068, the model demonstrates good fit. These findings suggest CET-4 translation reform could emphasize assessing students’ ability to convey cultural connotations alongside linguistic accuracy, and pedagogy should integrate cultural schema instruction (e.g., explaining culture-loaded words’ contexts) with translation technique training.