Found in Translation: Measuring Multilingual LLM Consistency as Simple as Translate then Evaluate

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Gupta, Ashim, Mehta, Maitrey, Xu, Zhichao, Srikumar, Vivek
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Gupta, Ashim
Mehta, Maitrey
Xu, Zhichao
Srikumar, Vivek
author_facet Gupta, Ashim
Mehta, Maitrey
Xu, Zhichao
Srikumar, Vivek
contents Large language models (LLMs) provide detailed and impressive responses to queries in English. However, are they really consistent at responding to the same query in other languages? The popular way of evaluating for multilingual performance of LLMs requires expensive-to-collect annotated datasets. Further, evaluating for tasks like open-ended generation, where multiple correct answers may exist, is nontrivial. Instead, we propose to evaluate the predictability of model response across different languages. In this work, we propose a framework to evaluate LLM's cross-lingual consistency based on a simple Translate then Evaluate strategy. We instantiate this evaluation framework along two dimensions of consistency: information and empathy. Our results reveal pronounced inconsistencies in popular LLM responses across thirty languages, with severe performance deficits in certain language families and scripts, underscoring critical weaknesses in their multilingual capabilities. These findings necessitate cross-lingual evaluations that are consistent along multiple dimensions. We invite practitioners to use our framework for future multilingual LLM benchmarking.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_21999
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Found in Translation: Measuring Multilingual LLM Consistency as Simple as Translate then Evaluate
Gupta, Ashim
Mehta, Maitrey
Xu, Zhichao
Srikumar, Vivek
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) provide detailed and impressive responses to queries in English. However, are they really consistent at responding to the same query in other languages? The popular way of evaluating for multilingual performance of LLMs requires expensive-to-collect annotated datasets. Further, evaluating for tasks like open-ended generation, where multiple correct answers may exist, is nontrivial. Instead, we propose to evaluate the predictability of model response across different languages. In this work, we propose a framework to evaluate LLM's cross-lingual consistency based on a simple Translate then Evaluate strategy. We instantiate this evaluation framework along two dimensions of consistency: information and empathy. Our results reveal pronounced inconsistencies in popular LLM responses across thirty languages, with severe performance deficits in certain language families and scripts, underscoring critical weaknesses in their multilingual capabilities. These findings necessitate cross-lingual evaluations that are consistent along multiple dimensions. We invite practitioners to use our framework for future multilingual LLM benchmarking.
title Found in Translation: Measuring Multilingual LLM Consistency as Simple as Translate then Evaluate
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21999