As an intangible cultural heritage (ICH) genre integrating Manchu culture and opera art, Manchu Xincheng Opera’s (MXO’s) culture-loaded words (CLWs) carry rich ethnic folk connotations and unique artistic features. However existing academic studies on this opera mostly focus on its artistic forms and local inheritance with relatively little research on translating its CLWs and a lack of targeted translation strategies hindering the effective communication of its cultural core and artistic value to the international community. From the perspective of ICH inheritance and transmission, this paper focuses on the English translation of CLWs in MXO. This study combines the theory of intangible cultural heritage communication with the core theory of CLWs translation, and comprehensively employs methods such as literature research, text analysis, and case studies to clarify the definition and cultural dimension classification of CLWs in MXO. However, in the actual process of English translation, the core difficulties have gradually emerged: The concept of Manchu’s exclusive culture lacks corresponding references in English culture. Its terms not only have the characteristic of efficient communication internally but also have natural exclusivity externally, which is prone to cause semantic transmission gaps. Meanwhile, due to the lack of Manchu cultural background, English audiences also find it difficult to accurately grasp the deep connotations behind the terms, which in turn leads to interpretation deviations. In response to these translation difficulties, this article adopts a variety of targeted translation methods such as literal translation, liberal translation, adapted translation, and creative translation, striving to accurately convey cultural connotations. This study aims to expand the current theoretical system of ICH translation research, and promote the effective inheritance of Chinese ICH in cross-cultural contexts.