Fully automated, semantically correct C-to-Java translation remains unsolved

Establish a fully automated methodology that achieves semantically correct translation from C to Java across complex C constructs—such as function pointers, pointer-to-pointer parameters, enum arithmetic, the sizeof operator, and nested structs—so that the generated Java code compiles, executes, and matches the behavior of the original C programs.

Background

Despite best-performing models passing over half the benchmark, all models failed uniformly on several conceptually difficult C constructs. The authors’ evaluation reveals consistent failure modes where even Tier 1 models could not bridge critical semantic gaps (e.g., function pointers and sizeof).

The authors therefore conclude that achieving fully automated, semantically correct C-to-Java translation is not yet realized by current small, quantized models and remains an open area of research.