用平行语料评估英语大模型对其他语言的理解能力,准确率高达90%。
MEXA: Multilingual Evaluation of English-Centric LLMs via Cross-Lingual Alignment
- 基于双语对照句,通过英语枢纽层对齐评估跨语言理解力
- 预测得分与实际表现相关性达0.90,验证方法可靠性
- 适合关注多语言模型性能评估的研究者和开发者
英语主导的大语言模型虽具备多语言能力,但其在非英语语言上的表现仍不清晰且评估不足。现有评测基准多集中于经典NLP任务,覆盖语言有限。本文提出MEXA,利用比下游任务更广泛可用的平行句子,评估预训练英语主导模型的多语言能力。该方法基于英语在模型中间层作为枢纽语言的特性,通过平行语料计算英语与非英语语言间的对齐度,进而估计模型在各语言上的理解迁移效果。我们在FLORES-200、Bible等平行数据集上,结合Llama系列、Gemma系列、Mistral和OLMo等模型,在Belebele、m-MMLU、m-ARC等下游任务中进行受控实验,探索解码器仅模型中嵌入表示的不同计算方式。结果表明,MEXA在默认设置下,其预测分数与真实任务表现之间的平均皮尔逊相关系数达到0.90,证明其能可靠估计英语主导型LLMs的多语言潜力,揭示模型内部工作机制。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
English-centric large language models (LLMs) often show strong multilingual capabilities. However, their multilingual performance remains unclear and is under-evaluated for many other languages. Most benchmarks for multilinguality focus on classic NLP tasks or cover a minimal number of languages. We introduce MEXA, a method for assessing the multilingual capabilities of pre-trained English-centric LLMs using parallel sentences, which are available for more languages than existing downstream tasks. MEXA leverages that English-centric LLMs use English as a pivot language in their intermediate layers. MEXA computes the alignment between English and non-English languages using parallel sentences to evaluate the transfer of language understanding from English to other languages. This alignment can be used to estimate model performance in different languages. We conduct controlled experiments using various parallel datasets (FLORES-200 and Bible), models (Llama family, Gemma family, Mistral, and OLMo), and established downstream tasks (Belebele, m-MMLU, and m-ARC). We explore different methods to compute embeddings in decoder-only models. Our results show that MEXA, in its default settings, achieves an average Pearson correlation of 0.90 between its predicted scores and actual task performance across languages. This suggests that MEXA is a reliable method for estimating the multilingual capabilities of English-centric LLMs, providing a clearer understanding of their multilingual potential and the inner workings of LLMs. Leaderboard: https://cis-lmu-mexa.hf.space, Code: https://github.com/cisnlp/MEXA.
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