Tool Calling for Arabic LLMs: Data Strategies and Instruction Tuning

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Ersoy, Asim, Altinisik, Enes, Sencar, Husrev Taha, Darwish, Kareem
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Ersoy, Asim
Altinisik, Enes
Sencar, Husrev Taha
Darwish, Kareem
author_facet Ersoy, Asim
Altinisik, Enes
Sencar, Husrev Taha
Darwish, Kareem
contents Tool calling is a critical capability that allows Large Language Models (LLMs) to interact with external systems, significantly expanding their utility. However, research and resources for tool calling are predominantly English-centric, leaving a gap in our understanding of how to enable this functionality for other languages, such as Arabic. This paper investigates three key research questions: (1) the necessity of in-language (Arabic) tool-calling data versus relying on cross-lingual transfer, (2) the effect of general-purpose instruction tuning on tool-calling performance, and (3) the value of fine-tuning on specific, high-priority tools. To address these questions, we conduct extensive experiments using base and post-trained variants of an open-weight Arabic LLM. To enable this study, we bridge the resource gap by translating and adapting two open-source tool-calling datasets into Arabic. Our findings provide crucial insights into the optimal strategies for developing robust tool-augmented agents for Arabic.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_20957
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tool Calling for Arabic LLMs: Data Strategies and Instruction Tuning
Ersoy, Asim
Altinisik, Enes
Sencar, Husrev Taha
Darwish, Kareem
Computation and Language
Tool calling is a critical capability that allows Large Language Models (LLMs) to interact with external systems, significantly expanding their utility. However, research and resources for tool calling are predominantly English-centric, leaving a gap in our understanding of how to enable this functionality for other languages, such as Arabic. This paper investigates three key research questions: (1) the necessity of in-language (Arabic) tool-calling data versus relying on cross-lingual transfer, (2) the effect of general-purpose instruction tuning on tool-calling performance, and (3) the value of fine-tuning on specific, high-priority tools. To address these questions, we conduct extensive experiments using base and post-trained variants of an open-weight Arabic LLM. To enable this study, we bridge the resource gap by translating and adapting two open-source tool-calling datasets into Arabic. Our findings provide crucial insights into the optimal strategies for developing robust tool-augmented agents for Arabic.
title Tool Calling for Arabic LLMs: Data Strategies and Instruction Tuning
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20957