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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27137 |
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| _version_ | 1866917448525021184 |
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| author | Baluta, Camelia |
| author_facet | Baluta, Camelia |
| contents | This paper introduces a systematic evaluation framework grounded in the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Skill Level Descriptions and applies it to Claude (Sonnet 4.6) across six languages: English, French, Romanian, Spanish, Italian, and German. We administer a battery of 12 semantically equivalent prompt clusters spanning ILR complexity levels 1 through 3+, collect 216 responses (12 prompts, 6 languages, 3 runs), and analyze outputs through a two-layer methodology combining automated quantitative metrics with expert ILR qualitative assessment. Quantitative analysis reveals that French responses are approximately 30% longer than German responses on identical prompts, and that creative and affective clusters show the highest cross-lingual surface divergence. Qualitative analysis, conducted by a six-language professional with 12 years of ILR/OPI assessment experience, identifies five cross-lingual variation patterns: systematic differences in pragmatic disambiguation strategies, aesthetic and literary tradition divergence in creative output, language-internal technical terminology norms, cultural calibration gaps evidenced by the absence of culture-specific content in favor of culturally neutralized templates, and language-specific institutional referral behavior in emotional support responses. We argue that ILR-informed expert judgment applied to LLM outputs constitutes a novel and underreported evaluation methodology that complements purely computational benchmarks, and that cross-lingual output variation in Claude is interpretable, domain-dependent, and consequential for equitable multilingual AI deployment. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_27137 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Cross-Lingual Response Consistency in Large Language Models: An ILR-Informed Evaluation of Claude Across Six Languages Baluta, Camelia Computation and Language This paper introduces a systematic evaluation framework grounded in the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Skill Level Descriptions and applies it to Claude (Sonnet 4.6) across six languages: English, French, Romanian, Spanish, Italian, and German. We administer a battery of 12 semantically equivalent prompt clusters spanning ILR complexity levels 1 through 3+, collect 216 responses (12 prompts, 6 languages, 3 runs), and analyze outputs through a two-layer methodology combining automated quantitative metrics with expert ILR qualitative assessment. Quantitative analysis reveals that French responses are approximately 30% longer than German responses on identical prompts, and that creative and affective clusters show the highest cross-lingual surface divergence. Qualitative analysis, conducted by a six-language professional with 12 years of ILR/OPI assessment experience, identifies five cross-lingual variation patterns: systematic differences in pragmatic disambiguation strategies, aesthetic and literary tradition divergence in creative output, language-internal technical terminology norms, cultural calibration gaps evidenced by the absence of culture-specific content in favor of culturally neutralized templates, and language-specific institutional referral behavior in emotional support responses. We argue that ILR-informed expert judgment applied to LLM outputs constitutes a novel and underreported evaluation methodology that complements purely computational benchmarks, and that cross-lingual output variation in Claude is interpretable, domain-dependent, and consequential for equitable multilingual AI deployment. |
| title | Cross-Lingual Response Consistency in Large Language Models: An ILR-Informed Evaluation of Claude Across Six Languages |
| topic | Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27137 |