Can We Triage LLM Translation Errors in Classical Texts Without Human References? Source Novelty, GEMBA Scoring, and Budgeted Review through Pali-to-English Translation

As large language models become capable translators of classical texts, a key challenge is deciding which outputs need expert review when no human reference exists. This study tests reference-free error triage through Pali-to-English translation. Three LLMs translated 15,493 passages. Five signals w