# Translating C To Rust: Lessons from a User Study

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.14174 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14174/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 21 Nov 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [EvoC2Rust: A Skeleton-guided Framework for Project-Level C-to-Rust Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04295/) (2025)
- [Adversarial Agent Collaboration for Correctness Improvements of C to Safe Rust Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03879/) (2025)
- [Project-Level C-to-Rust Translation via Pointer Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10956/) (2025)
- [ORBIT: Guided Agentic Orchestration for Autonomous C-to-Rust Transpilation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12048/) (2026)
- [ARuleCon: Agentic Security Rule Conversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06762/) (2026)
- [Documentation-Guided Agentic Codebase Migration from C to Rust](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14634/) (2026)
- [Fine-Tuning Qwen3-27B for C-to-Rust Code Translation: A Three-Stage Curriculum of Pretraining, Debugging-Aware SFT, and Task-Specific SFT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.13681/) (2026)
- [Translator vs. Challenger: Adversarial Agentic Learning for C-to-Rust Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15381/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Rust aims to offer full memory safety for programs, a guarantee that untamed C programs do not enjoy. How difficult is it to translate existing C code to Rust? To get a complementary view from that of automatic C to Rust translators, we report on a user study asking humans to translate real-world C programs to Rust. Our participants are able to produce safe Rust translations, whereas state-of-the-art automatic tools are not able to do so. Our analysis highlights that the high-level strategy taken by users departs significantly from those of automatic tools we study. We also find that users often choose zero-cost (static) abstractions for temporal safety, which addresses a predominant component of runtime costs in other full memory safety defenses. User-provided translations showcase a rich landscape of specialized strategies to translate the same C program in different ways to safe Rust, which future automatic translators can consider.