Microsoft patents code translator that strips language to swap programming styles
Microsoft describes a system that converts computer code from one programming language to another by first removing specific language details. It creates a simplified, universal version of the code that keeps the core logic intact. A neural network then uses this simplified version to generate new code in a different language.
In the filing’s own words
A source code translation system translates a source code snippet in an original source code programming language into distilled code that preserves the core semantics, logic flow, and data flow of the source code snippet in a language-independent format. The distilled code is then translated into a semantically-equivalent source code snippet in a different programming language by a decompiler. The decompiler is configured as a neural transformer model with attention pre-trained for translation using masked language modeling, denoising auto-encoding and multilingual program generation. The decompiler translates the distilled code into one of several different high-level programming languages.
What exactly they claim (claim 1)
1. A system for source code translation, comprising: a processor; and a memory that stores a program including instructions to be executed on the processor to perform acts that: obtain a first source code snippet comprising source code of a first high-level programming language; transform the first source code snippet into distilled code, wherein the distilled code comprises language-independent code elements; provide the distilled code to a decompiler for translation into a second high-level programming language; obtain a translation of the distilled code into source code of the second high-level programming language, wherein the first high-level programming language and the second programming language differ.
Facts
- Company
- Microsoft (MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC)
- Official title
- PROGRAM TRANSLATION THROUGH CODE DISTILLATION
- Publication number
- US20260277576A1
- Application number
- 19474934
- Filed
- Jun 19, 2023
- Published
- Sep 17, 2026
- Inventors
- 6
- Claims
- 20
Classified under
G06F 8/51 Physics & computingMore from Microsoft in AI & software
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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.