One of the challenges of translating Akkadian texts is that they are sometimes incomplete. Photo: CDLI
What did the first humans write? History? Akkadian is one of the oldest languages in the world; Fortunately, this is one of the best documents. Remnants of this extinct language – it would have been spoken by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians. Mesopotamia– In writing Cuneiform They date from 2700 BC to 75 AD and their translation, despite the recovery of numerous materials, has been an endless challenge for experts. However, now, with Artificial intelligenceThe team of researchers was able to translate what would normally take several more years.
These are the first translations from it Akkadian Directly and automatically in English. “We show that high-quality translations can be obtained when translating directly from cuneiform to English,” said Dr The study was published in the journal PNA NexusIn it, scientists from Tel Aviv University unveiled their groundbreaking method for uncovering ancient scriptures.
This achievement will make it possible to decipher more than half a million Akkadian texts that have been collected and are still not deciphered. “Translating all the untranslated tablets will expose us Early days of historyTo the civilization of those people, what they believed, what they talked about, what they documented,” Guy Guthers, one of the researchers responsible for the study, said in a statement to The Times of Israel.
Spanish translation: “If he cleans his clothes, his days will be long.” Photo: CDLI
How did you get the translation?
Translation of Ancient languages This poses challenges despite technological advances in translation through digital tools, as its understanding requires knowing a linguistic community that has long been extinct, the study explains. To address this challenge, for the first time, A team of scientists used a neural machine translation method (NMT) To understand Akkadian in English.
“The goal of the NMT system for Akkadian is to be part of human-machine collaboration by creating a pipeline that helps the scholar or student of the ancient language,” the study details. It also mentions that it has an NMT model connection.
For the document, it is specified that translation is taken into account as a fetching process Language Encode the source into your own script and re-encode it into another. At the same time, it is pointed out that it is based only on the written form of Akkadian, as its oral form is not recorded.
Challenges of understanding Akkadian
To achieve the translation from Akkadian, various challenges had to be faced, for example: The Clay tablets are not always fully protected and this affects the model I.A Because of the lack of context.
On the other hand, the study indicates that there are also symptoms Cuneiform writing They serve more than one function in the text: logograms, resolutions and phonograms, which result in multiple possible readings.
What types of ancient texts were found?
Some of the oldest texts in history were recovered:
- Royal Inscriptions
- Administrative letters
- Legal transactions
- Astrological reports
- Learned Papers
- Pastoral Letters
- Royal ceremonies
- Literary works
- prophecies.
