Multilingual Large Language Models (LLMs) often provide suboptimal performance on low-resource languages like Urdu. This paper introduces UrduLLaMA 1.0, a model derived from the open-source Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct architecture and continually pre-trained on 128 million Urdu tokens, capturing the rich diversity of the language. To enhance instruction-following and translation capabilities, we leverage Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) to fine tune the model on 41,000 Urdu instructions and approximately 50,000 English-Urdu translation pairs. Evaluation across three machine translation datasets demonstrates significant performance improvements compared to state-of-the-art (SOTA) models, establishing a new benchmark for Urdu LLMs. These findings underscore the potential of targeted adaptation strategies with limited data and computational resources to address the unique challenges of low-resource languages.
Can we improve machine translation (MT) with LLMs by rewriting their inputs automatically? Users commonly rely on the intuition that well-written text is easier to translate when using off-the-shelf MT systems. LLMs can rewrite text in many ways but in the context of MT, these capabilities have been primarily exploited to rewrite outputs via post-editing. We present an empirical study of 21 input rewriting methods with 3 open-weight LLMs for translating from English into 6 target languages. We show that text simplification is the most effective MT-agnostic rewrite strategy and that it can be improved further when using quality estimation to assess translatability. Human evaluation further confirms that simplified rewrites and their MT outputs both largely preserve the original meaning of the source and MT. These results suggest LLM-assisted input rewriting as a promising direction for improving translations.
While large language models demonstrate remarkable capabilities at task-specific applications through fine-tuning, extending these benefits across diverse languages is essential for broad accessibility. However, effective cross-lingual transfer is hindered by LLM performance gaps across languages and the scarcity of fine-tuning data in many languages. Through analysis of LLM internal representations from over 1,000+ language pairs, we discover that middle layers exhibit the strongest potential for cross-lingual alignment. Building on this finding, we propose a middle-layer alignment objective integrated into task-specific training. Our experiments on slot filling, machine translation, and structured text generation show consistent improvements in cross-lingual transfer, especially to lower-resource languages. The method is robust to the choice of alignment languages and generalizes to languages unseen during alignment. Furthermore, we show that separately trained alignment modules can be merged with existing task-specific modules, improving cross-lingual capabilities without full re-training. Our code is publicly available (https://github.com/dannigt/mid-align).
In the age of misinformation, hallucination -- the tendency of Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate non-factual or unfaithful responses -- represents the main risk for their global utility. Despite LLMs becoming increasingly multilingual, the vast majority of research on detecting and quantifying LLM hallucination are (a) English-centric and (b) focus on machine translation (MT) and summarization, tasks that are less common ``in the wild'' than open information seeking. In contrast, we aim to quantify the extent of LLM hallucination across languages in knowledge-intensive long-form question answering. To this end, we train a multilingual hallucination detection model and conduct a large-scale study across 30 languages and 6 open-source LLM families. We start from an English hallucination detection dataset and rely on MT to generate (noisy) training data in other languages. We also manually annotate gold data for five high-resource languages; we then demonstrate, for these languages, that the estimates of hallucination rates are similar between silver (LLM-generated) and gold test sets, validating the use of silver data for estimating hallucination rates for other languages. For the final rates estimation, we build a knowledge-intensive QA dataset for 30 languages with LLM-generated prompts and Wikipedia articles as references. We find that, while LLMs generate longer responses with more hallucinated tokens for higher-resource languages, there is no correlation between length-normalized hallucination rates of languages and their digital representation. Further, we find that smaller LLMs exhibit larger hallucination rates than larger models.
Does multilingual Neural Machine Translation (NMT) lead to The Curse of the Multlinguality or provides the Cross-lingual Knowledge Transfer within a language family? In this study, we explore multiple approaches for extending the available data-regime in NMT and we prove cross-lingual benefits even in 0-shot translation regime for low-resource languages. With this paper, we provide state-of-the-art open-source NMT models for translating between selected Slavic languages. We released our models on the HuggingFace Hub (https://hf.co/collections/allegro/multislav-6793d6b6419e5963e759a683) under the CC BY 4.0 license. Slavic language family comprises morphologically rich Central and Eastern European languages. Although counting hundreds of millions of native speakers, Slavic Neural Machine Translation is under-studied in our opinion. Recently, most NMT research focuses either on: high-resource languages like English, Spanish, and German - in WMT23 General Translation Task 7 out of 8 task directions are from or to English; massively multilingual models covering multiple language groups; or evaluation techniques.
Quality estimation is omnipresent in machine translation, for both evaluation and generation. Unfortunately, quality estimation models are often opaque and computationally expensive, making them impractical to be part of large-scale pipelines. In this work, we tackle two connected challenges: (1) reducing the cost of quality estimation at scale, and (2) developing an inexpensive uncertainty estimation method for quality estimation. To address the latter, we introduce Instant Confidence COMET, an uncertainty-aware quality estimation model that matches the performance of previous approaches at a fraction of their costs. We extend this to Early-Exit COMET, a quality estimation model that can compute quality scores and associated confidences already at early model layers, allowing us to early-exit computations and reduce evaluation costs. We also apply our model to machine translation reranking. We combine Early-Exit COMET with an upper confidence bound bandit algorithm to find the best candidate from a large pool without having to run the full evaluation model on all candidates. In both cases (evaluation and reranking) our methods reduce the required compute by 50% with very little degradation in performance.
Accurate translation of bug reports is critical for efficient collaboration in global software development. In this study, we conduct the first comprehensive evaluation of machine translation (MT) performance on bug reports, analyzing the capabilities of DeepL, AWS Translate, and large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, LLaMA, and Mistral using data from the Visual Studio Code GitHub repository, specifically focusing on reports labeled with the english-please tag. To assess both translation quality and source language identification accuracy, we employ a range of MT evaluation metrics-including BLEU, BERTScore, COMET, METEOR, and ROUGE-alongside classification metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. Our findings reveal that while ChatGPT (gpt-4o) excels in semantic and lexical translation quality, it does not lead in source language identification. Claude and Mistral achieve the highest F1-scores (0.7182 and 0.7142, respectively), and Gemini records the best precision (0.7414). AWS Translate shows the highest accuracy (0.4717) in identifying source languages. These results highlight that no single system dominates across all tasks, reinforcing the importance of task-specific evaluations. This study underscores the need for domain adaptation when translating technical content and provides actionable insights for integrating MT into bug-triaging workflows. The code and dataset for this paper are available at GitHub-https://github.com/av9ash/English-Please
In recent years, Large Language Models have garnered significant attention for their strong performance in various natural language tasks, such as machine translation and question answering. These models demonstrate an impressive ability to generalize across diverse tasks. However, their effectiveness in tackling domain-specific tasks, such as financial sentiment analysis and monetary policy understanding, remains a topic of debate, as these tasks often require specialized knowledge and precise reasoning. To address such challenges, researchers design various prompts to unlock the models' abilities. By carefully crafting input prompts, researchers can guide these models to produce more accurate responses. Consequently, prompt engineering has become a key focus of study. Despite the advancements in both models and prompt engineering, the relationship between the two-specifically, how prompt design impacts models' ability to perform domain-specific tasks-remains underexplored. This paper aims to bridge this research gap.
Larger models often outperform smaller ones but come with high computational costs. Cascading offers a potential solution. By default, it uses smaller models and defers only some instances to larger, more powerful models. However, designing effective deferral rules remains a challenge. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective approach for machine translation, using existing quality estimation (QE) metrics as deferral rules. We show that QE-based deferral allows a cascaded system to match the performance of a larger model while invoking it for a small fraction (30% to 50%) of the examples, significantly reducing computational costs. We validate this approach through both automatic and human evaluation.
Transformer-based models dominate NLP tasks like sentiment analysis, machine translation, and claim verification. However, their massive computational demands and lack of interpretability pose challenges for real-world applications requiring efficiency and transparency. In this work, we explore Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) and Hyperbolic Graph Neural Networks (HGNNs) as lightweight yet effective alternatives for Environmental Claim Detection, reframing it as a graph classification problem. We construct dependency parsing graphs to explicitly model syntactic structures, using simple word embeddings (word2vec) for node features with dependency relations encoded as edge features. Our results demonstrate that these graph-based models achieve comparable or superior performance to state-of-the-art transformers while using 30x fewer parameters. This efficiency highlights the potential of structured, interpretable, and computationally efficient graph-based approaches.
Converging societal and technical factors have transformed language technologies into user-facing applications employed across languages. Machine Translation (MT) has become a global tool, with cross-lingual services now also supported by dialogue systems powered by multilingual Large Language Models (LLMs). This accessibility has expanded MT's reach to a vast base of lay users, often with little to no expertise in the languages or the technology itself. Despite this, the understanding of MT consumed by this diverse group of users -- their needs, experiences, and interactions with these systems -- remains limited. This paper traces the shift in MT user profiles, focusing on non-expert users and how their engagement with these systems may change with LLMs. We identify three key factors -- usability, trust, and literacy -- that shape these interactions and must be addressed to align MT with user needs. By exploring these dimensions, we offer insights to guide future MT with a user-centered approach.
This paper introduces an advanced methodology for machine translation (MT) corpus generation, integrating semi-automated, human-in-the-loop post-editing with large language models (LLMs) to enhance efficiency and translation quality. Building upon previous work that utilized real-time training of a custom MT quality estimation metric, this system incorporates novel LLM features such as Enhanced Translation Synthesis and Assisted Annotation Analysis, which improve initial translation hypotheses and quality assessments, respectively. Additionally, the system employs LLM-Driven Pseudo Labeling and a Translation Recommendation System to reduce human annotator workload in specific contexts. These improvements not only retain the original benefits of cost reduction and enhanced post-edit quality but also open new avenues for leveraging cutting-edge LLM advancements. The project's source code is available for community use, promoting collaborative developments in the field. The demo video can be accessed here.
Organizations often lay down rules or guidelines called Natural Language Access Control Policies (NLACPs) for specifying who gets access to which information and when. However, these cannot be directly used in a target access control model like Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC). Manually translating the NLACP rules into Machine Enforceable Security Policies (MESPs) is both time consuming and resource intensive, rendering it infeasible especially for large organizations. Automated machine translation workflows, on the other hand, require information security officers to be adept at using such processes. To effectively address this problem, we have developed a free web-based publicly accessible tool called LMN (LLMs for generating MESPs from NLACPs) that takes an NLACP as input and converts it into a corresponding MESP. Internally, LMN uses the GPT 3.5 API calls and an appropriately chosen prompt. Extensive experiments with different prompts and performance metrics firmly establish the usefulness of LMN.
In-context machine translation (MT) with large language models (LLMs) is a promising approach for low-resource MT, as it can readily take advantage of linguistic resources such as grammar books and dictionaries. Such resources are usually selectively integrated into the prompt so that LLMs can directly perform translation without any specific training, via their in-context learning capability (ICL). However, the relative importance of each type of resource e.g., dictionary, grammar book, and retrieved parallel examples, is not entirely clear. To address this gap, this study systematically investigates how each resource and its quality affects the translation performance, with the Manchu language as our case study. To remove any prior knowledge of Manchu encoded in the LLM parameters and single out the effect of ICL, we also experiment with an encrypted version of Manchu texts. Our results indicate that high-quality dictionaries and good parallel examples are very helpful, while grammars hardly help. In a follow-up study, we showcase a promising application of in-context MT: parallel data augmentation as a way to bootstrap the conventional MT model. When monolingual data abound, generating synthetic parallel data through in-context MT offers a pathway to mitigate data scarcity and build effective and efficient low-resource neural MT systems.
This paper is a collaborative effort between Linguistics, Law, and Computer Science to evaluate stereotypes and biases in automated translation systems. We advocate gender-neutral translation as a means to promote gender inclusion and improve the objectivity of machine translation. Our approach focuses on identifying gender bias in English-to-Italian translations. First, we define gender bias following human rights law and linguistics literature. Then we proceed by identifying gender-specific terms such as she/lei and he/lui as key elements. We then evaluate the cosine similarity between these target terms and others in the dataset to reveal the model's perception of semantic relations. Using numerical features, we effectively evaluate the intensity and direction of the bias. Our findings provide tangible insights for developing and training gender-neutral translation algorithms.
The o1-Like LLMs are transforming AI by simulating human cognitive processes, but their performance in multilingual machine translation (MMT) remains underexplored. This study examines: (1) how o1-Like LLMs perform in MMT tasks and (2) what factors influence their translation quality. We evaluate multiple o1-Like LLMs and compare them with traditional models like ChatGPT and GPT-4o. Results show that o1-Like LLMs establish new multilingual translation benchmarks, with DeepSeek-R1 surpassing GPT-4o in contextless tasks. They demonstrate strengths in historical and cultural translation but exhibit a tendency for rambling issues in Chinese-centric outputs. Further analysis reveals three key insights: (1) High inference costs and slower processing speeds make complex translation tasks more resource-intensive. (2) Translation quality improves with model size, enhancing commonsense reasoning and cultural translation. (3) The temperature parameter significantly impacts output quality-lower temperatures yield more stable and accurate translations, while higher temperatures reduce coherence and precision.
The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) has advanced the multilingual machine translation (MMT), yet the Curse of Multilinguality (CoM) remains a major challenge. Existing work in LLM-based MMT typically mitigates this issue via scaling up training and computation budget, which raises a critical question: Is scaling up the training and computation budget truly necessary for high-quality MMT, or can a deeper understanding of CoM provide a more efficient solution? To explore this problem, we analyze the linguistic conflicts and synergy, the underlying mechanism of CoM during post-training phase. We identify an asymmetric phenomenon in linguistic conflicts and synergy: the dominance of conflicts and synergy varies in different translation directions, leading to sub-optimal adaptation in existing post-training methods. We further find that a significant bottleneck in MMT appears to lie in post-training rather than multilingual pre-training, suggesting the need for more effective adaptation strategies. Building on these new insights, we propose a direction-aware training approach, combined with group-wise model merging, to address asymmetry in linguistic conflicts and synergy explicitly. Leveraging this strategy, our method fine-tunes X-ALMA-13B-Pretrain-trained only with multilingual pre-training-achieving comparable performance to XALMA-13B (only SFT) while using only 20B pretraining tokens and 17B parameters-5.5x fewer pretraining-tokens and 1.7x fewer model size-with just 0.85 COMET drop on Flores-200 testsets of 50 languages.
Being able to thoroughly assess massive multi-task language understanding (MMLU) capabilities is essential for advancing the applicability of multilingual language models. However, preparing such benchmarks in high quality native language is often costly and therefore limits the representativeness of evaluation datasets. While recent efforts focused on building more inclusive MMLU benchmarks, these are conventionally built using machine translation from high-resource languages, which may introduce errors and fail to account for the linguistic and cultural intricacies of the target languages. In this paper, we address the lack of native language MMLU benchmark especially in the under-represented Turkic language family with distinct morphosyntactic and cultural characteristics. We propose two benchmarks for Turkic language MMLU: TUMLU is a comprehensive, multilingual, and natively developed language understanding benchmark specifically designed for Turkic languages. It consists of middle- and high-school level questions spanning 11 academic subjects in Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Tatar, Turkish, Uyghur, and Uzbek. We also present TUMLU-mini, a more concise, balanced, and manually verified subset of the dataset. Using this dataset, we systematically evaluate a diverse range of open and proprietary multilingual large language models (LLMs), including Claude, Gemini, GPT, and LLaMA, offering an in-depth analysis of their performance across different languages, subjects, and alphabets. To promote further research and development in multilingual language understanding, we release TUMLU-mini and all corresponding evaluation scripts.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable success in various tasks such as natural language understanding, text summarization, and machine translation. However, their general-purpose nature often limits their effectiveness in domain-specific applications that require specialized knowledge, such as healthcare, chemistry, or legal analysis. To address this, researchers have explored diverse methods to enhance LLMs by integrating domain-specific knowledge. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive overview of these methods, which we categorize into four key approaches: dynamic knowledge injection, static knowledge embedding, modular adapters, and prompt optimization. Each approach offers unique mechanisms to equip LLMs with domain expertise, balancing trade-offs between flexibility, scalability, and efficiency. We discuss how these methods enable LLMs to tackle specialized tasks, compare their advantages and disadvantages, evaluate domain-specific LLMs against general LLMs, and highlight the challenges and opportunities in this emerging field. For those interested in delving deeper into this area, we also summarize the commonly used datasets and benchmarks. To keep researchers updated on the latest studies, we maintain an open-source at: https://github.com/abilliyb/Knowledge_Injection_Survey_Papers, dedicated to documenting research in the field of specialized LLM.
ANCHOLIK-NER is a linguistically diverse dataset for Named Entity Recognition (NER) in Bangla regional dialects, capturing variations across Sylhet, Chittagong, and Barishal. The dataset has around 10,443 sentences, 3,481 sentences per region. The data was collected from two publicly available datasets and through web scraping from various online newspapers, articles. To ensure high-quality annotations, the BIO tagging scheme was employed, and professional annotators with expertise in regional dialects carried out the labeling process. The dataset is structured into separate subsets for each region and is available both in CSV format. Each entry contains textual data along with identified named entities and their corresponding annotations. Named entities are categorized into ten distinct classes: Person, Location, Organization, Food, Animal, Colour, Role, Relation, Object, and Miscellaneous. This dataset serves as a valuable resource for developing and evaluating NER models for Bangla dialectal variations, contributing to regional language processing and low-resource NLP applications. It can be utilized to enhance NER systems in Bangla dialects, improve regional language understanding, and support applications in machine translation, information retrieval, and conversational AI.