Researchers used artificial intelligence to translate thousands-year-old cuneiform clay tablets

Oxford University Press researchers used artificial intelligence to translate “Akkadian texts” with a high level of accuracy. Their research was published in the journal “PNAS Nexus“.

The “Akkadian language” (lišānum akkadītum) was an ancient language (a branch of the larger group of Afro-Asiatic languages) and was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, especially by the Assyrians and Babylonians.

Its written version used the cuneiform script; a writing system that arose from the Sumerian language, a non-Semitic language. Its name was derived from the city of “Akkad”, a great center of Mesopotamian civilization.

In the “Ancient Near East”, clay tablets —especially for “cuneiform” writing— were used as a writing medium throughout the “Bronze Age” and into the “Iron Age”. The cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed.

According to the researchers:

“Hundreds of thousands of cuneiform clay tablets document the political, social, economic and scientific history of ancient Mesopotamia. However, most of these documents remain untranslated and inaccessible, due to their sheer number and the limited number of experts who can read them.”

The “AI” program has a high level of accuracy when translating official “Akkadian texts”, such as royal decrees or omens that follow a specific pattern. More literary and poetic texts, such as clerical letters or pamphlets, were more likely to have “hallucinations”; an “AI” term meaning that the machine produced an effect completely unrelated to the text provided.

The goal of “neural machine translation (NMT)” to English from Akkadian is to be part of a human-machine collaboration, creating a pipeline that helps the scholar or student of the ancient language.

Currently, the “NMT” model is available in an e-notebook and the source code has been made available on “GitHub” at Akkademia.

The researchers are currently developing a web application called the Babylonian Engine.

Source: Heritage Daily

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