  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.
