AI RESEARCH
From Outliers to Errors: Auditing Pali-to-English LLM Translations with Multi-Reference Adjudication
arXiv CS.CL
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ArXi:2606.01136v1 Announce Type: new Single-score translation metrics can conflate legitimate variation with error, a problem especially acute for classical languages where multiple defensible English renderings of the same passage coexist. We audit Pali-to-English output from four flagship large language models (LLMs): GPT-5.5, Claude Sonnet 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, and Grok 4.3, on 1,700 passages from the Pali Canon, using three established human translations by Bhikkhu Sujato, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, and Bhikkhu Bodhi as a local reference envelope rather than a single gold standard.