arXiv:2607.22300cs.CL2026-07

用阿拉伯语和波斯语作桥梁,提升四种低资源语言的医学翻译质量。

Biomedical Machine Translation for Low-Resource Arabic-Script Languages via Cross-Lingual Transfer and LoRA Adapter Merging

  • 通过小模型微调构建领域专用适配器,实现跨语言知识迁移。
  • 仅用500句数据就达到接近母语水平的翻译效果,部分语言零数据下仍有效。
  • 适合医疗多语言系统开发者,尤其关注低资源语言的临床应用者。

我们系统研究了医疗领域的跨语言迁移,以缓解阿拉伯文字语言在生物医学机器翻译资源稀缺的问题。以阿拉伯语和波斯语为高资源桥接语言,提升四种严重低资源目标语言的表现:达里语(阿富汗波斯语)、普什图语、索兰尼库尔德语(中央库尔德语)和乌尔都语(与印地语密切相关)。在小型解码器模型上使用LoRA微调,训练出领域特定的桥接适配器,并评估三种迁移策略:少样本上下文学习、最小监督适应和首次在此场景中应用的零数据LoRA适配器合并。仅用500句监督数据即可使达里语达到CHrF++ 41.01的接近母语水平表现,乌尔都语也取得显著提升(28.88)。适配器合并技术在无需额外成本的情况下,使达里语性能仅比监督适应低3.5 CHrF++。然而,普什图语和索兰尼库尔德语因与桥接语言结构差异过大,仍不足以用于高风险临床部署,暴露了跨语言迁移的局限性。对于关系密切的语言,即使无目标语言生物医学数据,适配器合并依然表现出色。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

We present a systematic study of healthcare-domain cross-lingual transfer to address the scarcity of biomedical NMT resources for Arabic-script languages. We use Arabic and Persian as higher-resource pivots to improve translation for \textbf{four severely low-resource} targets: Dari (Afghan Persian, a standardised variety of Persian), Pashto, Sorani Kurdish (Central Kurdish, a major standardized variety of Kurdish), and Urdu (closely related to Hindi). Using LoRA fine-tuning on small decoder-only LLMs, we train \textit{domain-specific pivot adapters} and evaluate \textbf{three transfer strategies}: few-shot in-context learning, minimal supervised adaptation, and, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time in this setting, zero-data LoRA adapter merging. Supervised adaptation with just 500 sentences achieves near pivot-language quality for Dari (CHrF++ 41.01) and meaningful gains for Urdu (28.88), while adapter merging reaches within 3.5 CHrF++ of supervised adaptation for Dari at zero additional cost. Pashto and Sorani Kurdish remain insufficient for high-stakes clinical deployment exposing the limits of cross-lingual transfer when structural distance from the pivots is too great. LoRA adapter merging works surprisingly well for closely related languages, even without target-language biomedical data.

医学翻译低资源语言LoRA适配器跨语言迁移

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