# Program Skeletons for Automated Program Translation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07483 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07483/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03172/) (2023)
- [Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12950/) (2023)
- [StarCoder 2 and The Stack v2: The Next Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19173/) (2024)
- [DeepSeek-Coder-V2: Breaking the Barrier of Closed-Source Models in Code Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11931/) (2024)
- [Unsupervised Translation of Programming Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03511/) (2020)
- [Tree-to-tree Neural Networks for Program Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03691/) (2018)
- [Leveraging Automated Unit Tests for Unsupervised Code Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06773/) (2021)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models for Code: Evolution, Benchmarking, and Future Trends](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10372/) (2023)
- [Can Large Language Models Transform Natural Language Intent into Formal Method Postconditions?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01831/) (2023)
- [Knowledge Transfer from High-Resource to Low-Resource Programming Languages for Code LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09895/) (2023)
- [Perfection Not Required? Human-AI Partnerships in Code Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03820/) (2021)
- [Towards Translating Real-World Code with LLMs: A Study of Translating to Rust](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11514/) (2024)
- [Can Large Language Models Write Good Property-Based Tests?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04346/) (2023)
- [VERT: Verified Equivalent Rust Transpilation with Large Language Models as Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18852/) (2024)
- [Rectifier: Code Translation with Corrector via LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07472/) (2024)
- [SteloCoder: a Decoder-Only LLM for Multi-Language to Python Code Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.15539/) (2023)
- [SLING: Using Dynamic Analysis to Infer Program Invariants in Separation Logic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.09713/) (2019)
- [Synthesis through Unification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05868/) (2015)
- [Skeleton-Guided-Translation: A Benchmarking Framework for Code Repository Translation with Fine-Grained Quality Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16050/) (2025)
- [User-Customizable Transpilation of Scripting Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11220/) (2023)
- [Automatic Inference of Specifications in the K Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.06941/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [MatchFixAgent: Language-Agnostic Autonomous Repository-Level Code Translation Validation and Repair](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16187/) (2025)
- [SysMoBench: Evaluating AI on Formally Modeling Complex Real-World Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23130/) (2025)
- [ReCodeAgent: A Multi-agent Workflow for Language-Agnostic Translation and Validation of Large-Scale Repositories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07341/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Translating software between programming languages is a challenging task, for which automated techniques have been elusive and hard to scale up to larger programs. A key difficulty in cross-language translation is that one has to re-express the intended behavior of the source program into idiomatic constructs of a different target language. This task needs abstracting away from the source language-specific details, while keeping the overall functionality the same. In this work, we propose a novel and systematic approach for making such translation amenable to automation based on a framework we call program skeletons. A program skeleton retains the high-level structure of the source program by abstracting away and effectively summarizing lower-level concrete code fragments, which can be mechanically translated to the target programming language. A skeleton, by design, permits many different ways of filling in the concrete implementation for fragments, which can work in conjunction with existing data-driven code synthesizers. Most importantly, skeletons can conceptually enable sound decomposition, i.e., if each individual fragment is correctly translated, taken together with the mechanically translated skeleton, the final translated program is deemed to be correct as a whole. We present a prototype system called Skel embodying the idea of skeleton-based translation from Python to JavaScript. Our results show promising scalability compared to prior works. For 9 real-world Python programs, some with more than about 1k lines of code, 95% of their code fragments can be automatically translated, while about 5% require manual effort. All the final translations are correct with respect to whole-program test suites.