The major hindrance in the study of earlier scientific literature is the availability of Latin translations into modern languages. This is particular true for the works of Euler who authored about 850 manuscripts and wrote a thousand letters and received back almost two thousand more. The translation of many of these manuscripts, books and letters have been published in various sources over the last two centuries, but many more have not yet appeared. Fortunately, nowadays, artificial intelligence (AI) translation can be used to circumvent the challenges of translating such substantial number of texts. To validate this tool, benchmark tests have been performed to compare the performance of two popular AI translating algorithms, namely Google Translate and ChatGPT. Additional tests were accomplished in translating an excerpt of a 1739 letter from Johann Bernoulli to Euler, where he announces that he was sending Euler the first part of his manuscript Hydraulica. Overall, the comparative results show that ChatGPT performed better that Google Translate not only in the benchmark tests but also in the translation of this letter, highlighting the superiority of ChatGPT as a translation tool, catering not only to general Latin practitioners but also proving beneficial for specialized Latin translators.

翻译：在研究早期科学文献时，主要障碍在于缺乏拉丁语文本的现代语言译本。对于著有约850份手稿、撰写一千封信件并收到近两千封回信的欧拉而言，这一困境尤为突出。过去两个世纪以来，这些手稿、书籍和书信的译本虽已发表于各类文献，但仍有大量内容尚未付梓。所幸，如今人工智能（AI）翻译技术可破解如此庞大体量文本的翻译难题。为验证该工具的有效性，本研究开展了基准测试，对比了两款主流AI翻译算法——谷歌翻译与ChatGPT的性能。此外，还完成了对约翰·伯努利1739年致欧拉信件节选（信中告知将寄送其《水力学》手稿第一部分）的翻译测试。总体对比结果表明，ChatGPT不仅在基准测试中表现更优，在翻译该信件时同样胜过谷歌翻译，彰显了ChatGPT作为翻译工具的卓越性——它不仅适用于普通拉丁语使用者，更能为专业拉丁语译者提供助益。