# Found in Translation: Reconstructing Phylogenetic Language Trees from Translations

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the historical relationships of source languages can be reconstructed from translated texts, revealing that source language interference persists strongly even after multiple translation phases.

## Contribution

It introduces a method to automatically reconstruct phylogenetic language trees solely from monolingual translated texts, highlighting the dominance of source language interference.

## Key findings

- Source language signals are detectable after two translation phases.
- Translated texts retain strong traces of the original language.
- Source language interference overshadows universal translation properties.

## Abstract

Translation has played an important role in trade, law, commerce, politics, and literature for thousands of years. Translators have always tried to be invisible; ideal translations should look as if they were written originally in the target language. We show that traces of the source language remain in the translation product to the extent that it is possible to uncover the history of the source language by looking only at the translation. Specifically, we automatically reconstruct phylogenetic language trees from monolingual texts (translated from several source languages). The signal of the source language is so powerful that it is retained even after two phases of translation. This strongly indicates that source language interference is the most dominant characteristic of translated texts, overshadowing the more subtle signals of universal properties of translation.