arXiv:2603.16660cs.CLcs.AI2026-03中稿 · LoResMT 2026: EACL…

用相似语言+少量示例,让大模型在低资源翻译中少调参也能提效。

Can Linguistically Related Languages Guide LLM Translation in Low-Resource Settings?

  • 用语言相近的桥梁语言和少量示例进行推理时提示。
  • 目标语言词汇覆盖差时翻译效果提升明显,但增益有限且不稳定。
  • 适合无数据、不调参的快速低资源翻译场景,替代微调。

大型语言模型(LLMs)在众多下游任务中表现强劲,但在极低资源机器翻译场景下仍受限。常规适配方法依赖大规模平行数据或大量微调,对长尾的未充分代表语言不可行。本文研究在数据稀缺情况下,语言相关性高的桥接语言与少量示例能否为LLM的即时适配提供有效引导。我们采用无需参数更新的数据高效实验设置,结合语言相似的桥接语言与少量上下文示例,在受控条件下评估翻译行为。分析显示,桥接提示在目标语言词表覆盖较差时有一定改进,但增益通常有限且对示例构造敏感;对于关系密切或已较好表示的语言变体,收益递减或不一致。结果为推理时提示与桥接示例的应用提供了实证指导,表明其可作为低资源翻译中微调的轻量替代方案。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved strong performance across many downstream tasks, yet their effectiveness in extremely low-resource machine translation remains limited. Standard adaptation techniques typically rely on large-scale parallel data or extensive fine-tuning, which are infeasible for the long tail of underrepresented languages. In this work, we investigate a more constrained question: in data-scarce settings, to what extent can linguistically similar pivot languages and few-shot demonstrations provide useful guidance for on-the-fly adaptation in LLMs? We study a data-efficient experimental setup that combines linguistically related pivot languages with few-shot in-context examples, without any parameter updates, and evaluate translation behavior under controlled conditions. Our analysis shows that while pivot-based prompting can yield improvements in certain configurations, particularly in settings where the target language is less well represented in the model's vocabulary, the gains are often modest and sensitive to few shot example construction. For closely related or better represented varieties, we observe diminishing or inconsistent gains. Our findings provide empirical guidance on how and when inference-time prompting and pivot-based examples can be used as a lightweight alternative to fine-tuning in low-resource translation settings.

低资源翻译提示工程语言相似性LLM应用

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