By Yoon Sung-won



An artificial intelligence (AI)-based program will translate the Seungjeongwon Ilgi, the diary of the royal secretariat of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) written in Chinese characters, into Korean, according to government officials, Monday.



Once the project kicks off, it will be the world's first case of translating a classical document written in Chinese characters using an AI-based automation system.



Expectations are high that the introduction of AI will shorten the lead time to translate the massive archives of classical Korean documents written in Chinese characters.



The project is part of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning's drive to boost public services based on information and communications technology this year.



"We are working on the project with related agencies including the Institute for the Translation of Korean Classics as it has been chosen as one of the ministry's official projects for this year," an official said, Monday. "The project will be reviewed by a coordination committee and will kick off only after it passes evaluation."



The official said the agency will hold a forum later this month to give out more details on the project.



The Seungjeongwon Ilgi is considered one of the most important records of the Joseon Kingdom. But a translation project, which started in 1994, has translated less than 20 percent so far because it was written in over 240 million Chinese characters.



The Institute for the Translation of Korean Classics plans to apply the AI-based translation system for the Ilseongnok (the diary of Joseon kings), and the True Record of the Joseon Kingdom, according to industry sources.



Besides the Seungjeongwon Ilgi, the Ilseongnok and the True Record of the Joseon Kingdom, major classical archives here are comprised of massive volumes that need translation. But the process has been slow due to a lack of experts in classical writing translation. There are only about 200 translators specialized in classical writing in Korea, according to the industry.



The translation institute said the AI-based system taps into a technology called "neural machine translation," which helps the system learn from repetitive patterns.



Because the translation program is not based on a complete AI system, it needs a database that includes hundreds of thousands of sentences translated by human experts. The system then builds a translation model to work on unprocessed sentences.



Unlike multiple commercial translation systems which interpret between modern languages, the AI-based program is the world's first to translate documents written in an archaic language.



But the AI-based translation program will assist human experts by producing only rough drafts for now. It will not be able to comment on the translations and research classical writings with enough depth to replace human translators, according to the translation institute.



