I don’t think the Chinese room is a good analogy for this. The Chinese room has a conscious person at the center. A better analogy might be a book with a phrase-to-number conversion table, a couple number-to-number conversion tables, and finally a number-to-word conversion table. That would probably capture transformer’s rigid and unthinking associations better.
I’m not sure whether techno mage & her friends really exist in canon, or are just spooky tales told by the MATA seniors to scare interns.