Standard translation
Introduction In modal logic, '''standard translation''' is a logic translation that transforms formulas of modal logic into formulas of first-order logic which capture the meaning of the modal formulas. Standard translation is defined inductively on the structure of the formula. In short, atomic formulas are mapped onto unary predicates and the objects in the first-order language are the accessible worlds. The logical connectives from propositional logic remain untouched and the modal operators are transformed into first-order formulas according to their semantics.
Definition Standard translation is defined as follows:*, where  is an atomic formula; P(x) is true when  holds in world . ********In the above,  is the world from which the formula is evaluated. Initially, a free variable  is used and whenever a modal operator needs to be translated, a fresh variable is introduced to indicate that the remainder of the formula needs to be evaluated from that world. Here, the subscript  refers to the accessibility relation that should be used: normally,  and  refer to a relation  of the Kripke model but more than one accessibility relation can exist (a multimodal logic) in which case subscripts are used. For example,  and  refer to an accessibility relation  and  and  to  in the model. Alternatively, it can also be placed inside the modal symbol.
Example As an example, when standard translation is applied to , we expand the outer box to get: meaning that we have now moved from  to an accessible world  and we now evaluate the remainder of the formula, , in each of those accessible worlds.The whole standard translation of this example becomes: which precisely captures the semantics of two boxes in modal logic. The formula  holds in  when for all accessible worlds  from  and for all accessible worlds  from , the predicate  is true for . Note that the formula is also true when no such accessible worlds exist. In case  has no accessible worlds then  is false but the whole formula is vacuously true: an implication is also true when the antecedent is false.
Standard translation and modal depth The modal depth of a formula also becomes apparent in the translation to first-order logic. When the modal depth of a formula is ''k'', then the first-order logic formula contains a 'chain' of ''k'' transitions from the starting world . The worlds are 'chained' in the sense that these worlds are visited by going from accessible to accessible world. Informally, the number of transitions in the 'longest chain' of transitions in the first-order formula is the modal depth of the formula.The modal depth of the formula used in the example above is two. The first-order formula indicates that the transitions from  to  and from  to  are needed to verify the validity of the formula. This is also the modal depth of the formula as each modal operator increases the modal depth by one.
References * Patrick Blackburn and Johan van Benthem (1988), ''Modal Logic: A Semantic Perspective''.