This paper attempts to conduct a detailed study of the AI-aided English translation of a seemingly simple but very familiar and significant concept, cǎoyuán míngzhū [“grassland pearl”, 草原明珠], in the Chinese Northern Borderland Culture. To do so, we use systemic functional linguistics as the theoretical framework, and the study is based on the systemic functional syntactic analysis and language comparison between the Chinese and English nominal groups by which the concept is realized. Besides, AI tools such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek are utilized to offer preliminary translations which form word and structure systems to be selected in the delicacy analysis that follows. The findings show that the AI-aided translation of the Chinese nominal groups ought not to be carried out in the way that the nominal group is translated as an independent grammatical unit isolated from the clause in which it appears. Rather, the factors of context are to be taken into consideration as the context plays a crucial role in helping to seek the right word and syntactic structure in inter-lingual translation. In addition, although the AI tools can provide various candidate words and structures, the selection of the options from the word and structure systems still has to be based on the functional syntactic analysis. It is hoped that this study may promote further research on the English translation of the Chinese Northern Borderland Culture, contribute to the localization of systemic functional approach to translation studies, and provide insights into AI-assisted translation studies, especially into the English translation studies of the Chinese nominal groups.