Translating large source code using sparse self- attention

Abstract

Techniques are described herein for translating source code using sparse-self attention. In various implementations, a source code snippet in a first programming language may be processed to obtain graph(s) representing snippet tokens, and relationships therebetween. Based on the graph(s), a subset of snippet token pairs may be identified from a superset of all possible token pairs in the source code snippet. Each token pair of the subset may include snippet tokens that are represented by nodes connected by one or more edges of the one or more graphs. A self-attention network of a translation machine learning model may be adapted to sparsely attend across the identified subset of token pairs. The source code snippet may then be processed based on the adapted translation machine learning model to generate a translation of the source code snippet in the second programming language.