Optimizing the Training Schedule of Multilingual NMT using Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Allemann, Alexis, Atrio, Àlex R., Popescu-Belis, Andrei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Allemann, Alexis
Atrio, Àlex R.
Popescu-Belis, Andrei
author_facet Allemann, Alexis
Atrio, Àlex R.
Popescu-Belis, Andrei
contents Multilingual NMT is a viable solution for translating low-resource languages (LRLs) when data from high-resource languages (HRLs) from the same language family is available. However, the training schedule, i.e. the order of presentation of languages, has an impact on the quality of such systems. Here, in a many-to-one translation setting, we propose to apply two algorithms that use reinforcement learning to optimize the training schedule of NMT: (1) Teacher-Student Curriculum Learning and (2) Deep Q Network. The former uses an exponentially smoothed estimate of the returns of each action based on the loss on monolingual or multilingual development subsets, while the latter estimates rewards using an additional neural network trained from the history of actions selected in different states of the system, together with the rewards received. On a 8-to-1 translation dataset with LRLs and HRLs, our second method improves BLEU and COMET scores with respect to both random selection of monolingual batches and shuffled multilingual batches, by adjusting the number of presentations of LRL vs. HRL batches.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_06118
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimizing the Training Schedule of Multilingual NMT using Reinforcement Learning
Allemann, Alexis
Atrio, Àlex R.
Popescu-Belis, Andrei
Computation and Language
Multilingual NMT is a viable solution for translating low-resource languages (LRLs) when data from high-resource languages (HRLs) from the same language family is available. However, the training schedule, i.e. the order of presentation of languages, has an impact on the quality of such systems. Here, in a many-to-one translation setting, we propose to apply two algorithms that use reinforcement learning to optimize the training schedule of NMT: (1) Teacher-Student Curriculum Learning and (2) Deep Q Network. The former uses an exponentially smoothed estimate of the returns of each action based on the loss on monolingual or multilingual development subsets, while the latter estimates rewards using an additional neural network trained from the history of actions selected in different states of the system, together with the rewards received. On a 8-to-1 translation dataset with LRLs and HRLs, our second method improves BLEU and COMET scores with respect to both random selection of monolingual batches and shuffled multilingual batches, by adjusting the number of presentations of LRL vs. HRL batches.
title Optimizing the Training Schedule of Multilingual NMT using Reinforcement Learning
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.06118