mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

BabelCoder: Agentic Code Translation with Specification Alignment

arXiv 2512.06902 ↗First posted 7 Dec 2025cs.SE cs.AIcited by 1

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents

Abstract (arXiv)

As software systems evolve, developers increasingly work across multiple programming languages and often face the need to migrate code from one language to another. While automatic code translation offers a promising solution, it has long remained a challenging task. Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown potential for this task, yet existing approaches remain limited in accuracy and fail to effectively leverage contextual and structural cues within the code. Prior work has explored translation and repair mechanisms, but lacks a structured, agentic framework where multiple specialized agents collaboratively improve translation quality. In this work, we introduce BabelCoder, an agentic framework that performs code translation by decomposing the task into specialized agents for translation, testing, and refinement, each responsible for a specific aspect such as generating code, validating correctness, or repairing errors. We evaluate BabelCoder on four benchmark datasets and compare it against four state-of-the-art baselines. BabelCoder outperforms existing methods by 0.5%-13.5% in 94% of cases, achieving an average accuracy of 94.16%.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 28 of its 51 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Dec 2025.

Builds on

28 of 51 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025MANTRA: Enhancing Automated Method-Level Refactoring with Contextual RAG and Multi-Agent LLM Collaboration18 Mar
  2. 2024Self-Organized Agents: A LLM Multi-Agent Framework toward Ultra Large-Scale Code Generation and Optimization2 Apr
  3. 2024CodeAgent: Enhancing Code Generation with Tool-Integrated Agent Systems for Real-World Repo-level Coding Challenges14 Jan
  4. 2023Self-collaboration Code Generation via ChatGPT15 Apr

Other references · 24

  1. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  2. 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
  3. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  4. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,203
  5. 2023Is Your Code Generated by ChatGPT Really Correct? Rigorous Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code Generationcited by 1,332
  6. 2020Unsupervised Translation of Programming Languagescited by 262
  7. 2021CodeNet: A Large-Scale AI for Code Dataset for Learning a Diversity of Coding Taskscited by 199
  8. 2021Leveraging Automated Unit Tests for Unsupervised Code Translationcited by 82
  9. 2021AVATAR: A Parallel Corpus for Java-Python Program Translationcited by 59
  10. 2024Exploring and Unleashing the Power of Large Language Models in Automated Code Translationcited by 57
  11. 2022Code Translation with Compiler Representationscited by 42
  12. 2024Teaching Code LLMs to Use Autocompletion Tools in Repository-Level Code Generationcited by 30
12 more
  1. 2024AlphaTrans: A Neuro-Symbolic Compositional Approach for Repository-Level Code Translation and Validationcited by 28
  2. 2024Bias Unveiled: Investigating Social Bias in LLM-Generated Codecited by 25
  3. 2024Enhancing Code Translation in Language Models with Few-Shot Learning via Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 16
  4. 2024InterTrans: Leveraging Transitive Intermediate Translations to Enhance LLM-based Code Translationcited by 15
  5. 2023Ownership guided C to Rust translationcited by 13
  6. 2025ExeCoder: Empowering Large Language Models with Executability Representation for Code Translationcited by 10
  7. 2024An Exploratory Study on Fine-Tuning Large Language Models for Secure Code Generationcited by 8
  8. 2023Syntax and Domain Aware Model for Unsupervised Program Translationcited by 7
  9. 2023Assessing and Improving Syntactic Adversarial Robustness of Pre-trained Models for Code Translationcited by 6
  10. 2025A Multi-Language Perspective on the Robustness of LLM Code Generationcited by 6
  11. 2024Specification-Driven Code Translation Powered by Large Language Models: How Far Are We?cited by 5
  12. 2025RobuNFR: Evaluating the Robustness of Large Language Models on Non-Functional Requirements Aware Code Generationcited by 5

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

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  1. 2024TransAgent: Enhancing LLM-Based Code Translation via Fine-Grained Execution Alignment
  2. 2026LegacyTranslate: LLM-based Multi-Agent Method for Legacy Code Translation
  3. 2025RepoTransAgent: Multi-Agent LLM Framework for Repository-Aware Code Translation
  4. 2025SWE-Compass: Towards Unified Evaluation of Agentic Coding Abilities for Large Language Models
  5. 2026SWE-Bench ProMax: Benchmarking Agents on Large-Scale Multilingual Code Refactoring
  6. 2026BackendForge: Benchmarking Agentic End-to-End Code Generation with Backend Services
  7. 2025Unlocking LLM Repair Capabilities Through Cross-Language Translation and Multi-Agent Refinement
  8. 2026BabelArena: A Large-Scale Multilingual Benchmark for LLM Agents