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Main Authors: Park, Jin Hyun, Laminchhane, Utsawb, Farooq, Umer, Sivakumar, Uma, Kumar, Arpan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17187
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author Park, Jin Hyun
Laminchhane, Utsawb
Farooq, Umer
Sivakumar, Uma
Kumar, Arpan
author_facet Park, Jin Hyun
Laminchhane, Utsawb
Farooq, Umer
Sivakumar, Uma
Kumar, Arpan
contents Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly utilized for machine translation, yet their predictions often exhibit uncertainties that hinder interpretability and user trust. Effectively visualizing these uncertainties can enhance the usability of LLM outputs, particularly in contexts where translation accuracy is critical. This paper addresses two primary objectives: (1) providing users with token-level insights into model confidence and (2) developing a web-based visualization tool to quantify and represent translation uncertainties. To achieve these goals, we utilized the T5 model with the WMT19 dataset for translation tasks and evaluated translation quality using established metrics such as BLEU, METEOR, and ROUGE. We introduced three novel uncertainty quantification (UQ) metrics: (1) the geometric mean of token probabilities, (2) the arithmetic mean of token probabilities, and (3) the arithmetic mean of the kurtosis of token distributions. These metrics provide a simple yet effective framework for evaluating translation performance. Our analysis revealed a linear relationship between the traditional evaluation metrics and our UQ metrics, demonstrating the validity of our approach. Additionally, we developed an interactive web-based visualization that uses a color gradient to represent token confidence. This tool offers users a clear and intuitive understanding of translation quality while providing valuable insights into model performance. Overall, we show that our UQ metrics and visualization are both robust and interpretable, offering practical tools for evaluating and accessing machine translation systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_17187
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Visualizing Uncertainty in Translation Tasks: An Evaluation of LLM Performance and Confidence Metrics
Park, Jin Hyun
Laminchhane, Utsawb
Farooq, Umer
Sivakumar, Uma
Kumar, Arpan
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly utilized for machine translation, yet their predictions often exhibit uncertainties that hinder interpretability and user trust. Effectively visualizing these uncertainties can enhance the usability of LLM outputs, particularly in contexts where translation accuracy is critical. This paper addresses two primary objectives: (1) providing users with token-level insights into model confidence and (2) developing a web-based visualization tool to quantify and represent translation uncertainties. To achieve these goals, we utilized the T5 model with the WMT19 dataset for translation tasks and evaluated translation quality using established metrics such as BLEU, METEOR, and ROUGE. We introduced three novel uncertainty quantification (UQ) metrics: (1) the geometric mean of token probabilities, (2) the arithmetic mean of token probabilities, and (3) the arithmetic mean of the kurtosis of token distributions. These metrics provide a simple yet effective framework for evaluating translation performance. Our analysis revealed a linear relationship between the traditional evaluation metrics and our UQ metrics, demonstrating the validity of our approach. Additionally, we developed an interactive web-based visualization that uses a color gradient to represent token confidence. This tool offers users a clear and intuitive understanding of translation quality while providing valuable insights into model performance. Overall, we show that our UQ metrics and visualization are both robust and interpretable, offering practical tools for evaluating and accessing machine translation systems.
title Visualizing Uncertainty in Translation Tasks: An Evaluation of LLM Performance and Confidence Metrics
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17187