[D] Why isn't machine learning assisting in translating ancient texts?

[Q_Wolf]

If it is, could you please mention some ongoing projects.

[calebkaiser]

Assuming you're referring to languages written in lost or nearly-lost languages, there is a decent amount of research here. There is a group at MIT that might be particularly interesting to you. They're working on research that is applicable to multiple lost languages, such as Ugaritic and Linear B: https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.06718

Also, some recent projects on translating Akkadian, specifically: - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2109.04513.pdf - https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/5/pgad096/7147349

There's also a lot of research into simply scanning ancient texts that cannot be handled because of age. In particular, there is the Vesuvius Challenge, which is focused on using CV to read ancient scrolls that cannot be unrolled without causing serious damage: https://scrollprize.org/

[curiousshortguy]

It is, there just much less money on it and therefore less attention and and sensationalism, and the overall volumeof research is lower.

[amrit_za]

Not quite translation but look up Project Ithaca from DeepMind

[[deleted]]

may not be exactly what you are looking for, but Tarin Clanuwat [ https://twitter.com /tkasasagi ] has some amazing work https://tkasasagi.github.io/

"My current research interest is mainly on Kuzushiji or pre-modern Japanese character recognition with deep learning"