How Well Do Large Reasoning Models Translate? A Comprehensive Evaluation for Multi-Domain Machine Translation

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Hauptverfasser: Ye, Yongshi, Fu, Biao, Huang, Chongxuan, Chen, Yidong, Shi, Xiaodong
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Ye, Yongshi
Fu, Biao
Huang, Chongxuan
Chen, Yidong
Shi, Xiaodong
author_facet Ye, Yongshi
Fu, Biao
Huang, Chongxuan
Chen, Yidong
Shi, Xiaodong
contents Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong performance in general-purpose machine translation, but their effectiveness in complex, domain-sensitive translation tasks remains underexplored. Recent advancements in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), raise the question of whether structured reasoning can enhance translation quality across diverse domains. In this work, we compare the performance of LRMs with traditional LLMs across 15 representative domains and four translation directions. Our evaluation considers various factors, including task difficulty, input length, and terminology density. We use a combination of automatic metrics and an enhanced MQM-based evaluation hierarchy to assess translation quality. Our findings show that LRMs consistently outperform traditional LLMs in semantically complex domains, especially in long-text and high-difficulty translation scenarios. Moreover, domain-adaptive prompting strategies further improve performance by better leveraging the reasoning capabilities of LRMs. These results highlight the potential of structured reasoning in MDMT tasks and provide valuable insights for optimizing translation systems in domain-sensitive contexts.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_19987
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle How Well Do Large Reasoning Models Translate? A Comprehensive Evaluation for Multi-Domain Machine Translation
Ye, Yongshi
Fu, Biao
Huang, Chongxuan
Chen, Yidong
Shi, Xiaodong
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong performance in general-purpose machine translation, but their effectiveness in complex, domain-sensitive translation tasks remains underexplored. Recent advancements in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), raise the question of whether structured reasoning can enhance translation quality across diverse domains. In this work, we compare the performance of LRMs with traditional LLMs across 15 representative domains and four translation directions. Our evaluation considers various factors, including task difficulty, input length, and terminology density. We use a combination of automatic metrics and an enhanced MQM-based evaluation hierarchy to assess translation quality. Our findings show that LRMs consistently outperform traditional LLMs in semantically complex domains, especially in long-text and high-difficulty translation scenarios. Moreover, domain-adaptive prompting strategies further improve performance by better leveraging the reasoning capabilities of LRMs. These results highlight the potential of structured reasoning in MDMT tasks and provide valuable insights for optimizing translation systems in domain-sensitive contexts.
title How Well Do Large Reasoning Models Translate? A Comprehensive Evaluation for Multi-Domain Machine Translation
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19987