The study investigates how multilingual training affects figurative language identification in proverbs, using 742 proverb concepts translated into seven languages. Five models—including multilingual encoders and instruction‑tuned LLMs—were evaluated with varying levels of multilingual supervision, and a new multidimensional annotation framework was introduced to classify proverbs into metaphorical, moral/advisory, cause‑effect, and culture‑specific forms. Results show that adding multilingual data beyond 50% yields limited gains, but the best supervision level depends on the model and language; combining diverse figurative forms improves overall performance, especially for the least frequent culture‑specific form.
By Rama Alomair, Remas Alsubaie, Walaa Saifalislam, Rima Alsonbul, Mona Alnajjar, Razan Aldossari, Haya Alibrahim, Abeer Aldayel
arXiv:2608. 04670v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have transformed computational linguistics and achieved remarkable performance across numerous natural language processing tasks, yet significant gaps persist in understanding how these systems process culturally embedded linguistic expressions.
By Enrico Mensa, Lorenzo Zane, Calogero Jerik Scozzaro, Matteo Delsanto, Tommaso Milani, Daniele Paolo Radicioni
arXiv:2606. 02147v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Idiomatic expressions pose a major challenge for multilingual NLP because their meanings shift between figurative and literal usage, often requiring context for accurate interpretation.
By Saeed Almheiri, Bilal Elbouardi, Salsabila Zahirah Pranida, Irina Nikishina, Ashwath Rao B, Parameswari Krishnamurthy, Muhammad Cendekia Airlangga, Rifo Ahmad Genadi, Nguyen Phan Gia Bao, Amir Hossein Yari, Hawau Olamide Toyin, Nurdaulet Mukhituly, Mena Attia, Besher Hassan, Ahmad Fathan Hidayatullah, Tatsuki Kuribayashi, Haonan Li, Suma Bhat, Fajri Koto
arXiv:2607. 23058v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multilingual reasoning evaluation overwhelmingly relies on translating English benchmarks, a practice that introduces linguistic artifacts and fails to test culturally-grounded reasoning.
By Ahmed Haj Ahmed, Alvin Grissom II
arXiv:2601. 14063v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Cross-cultural competence in large language models (LLMs) requires understanding and adapting Culture-Specific Items (CSIs) across varying cultural contexts.
By Mohsinul Kabir, Tasnim Ahmed, Md Mezbaur Rahman, Shaoxiong Ji, Hassan Alhuzali, Yuechen Jiang, Jimin Huang, Sophia Ananiadou
arXiv:2510.18368v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: We present $\textbf{Korean SimpleQA (KoSimpleQA)}$, a benchmark for evaluating factuality in large language models (LLMs) with a focus on Korean cu...
By Donghyeon Ko, Kyubyung Chae, Yeguk Jin, Byungwook Lee, Chansong Jo, Sookyo In, Jaehong Lee, Taesup Kim, Donghyun Kwak
arXiv:2607. 02235v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: LLM-as-a-Judge has become the dominant evaluation paradigm for many natural language generation tasks, due to shortcomings of conventional metrics and high correlations with human judgment, albeit mostly in English.
By A. Seza Do\u{g}ru\"oz, Xixian Liao, Verena Blaschke, Jakob Prange, Senyu Li, David Ifeoluwa Adelani
arXiv:2608. 03095v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present VIVID (Vietnamese Idioms for Validation and Interpretation Depth), the first systematic benchmark for evaluating culturally grounded figurative language understanding in Vietnamese.
By Tu Tran Do, Nhat Ngoc Nguyen, Khanh-Tung Tran, Hoang D. Nguyen, Tu Minh Phuong, Long Hoang Dang
arXiv:2607.02235v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: LLM-as-a-Judge has become the dominant evaluation paradigm for many natural language generation tasks (albeit mostly in English) due to short...
By A. Seza Do\u{g}ru\"oz, Xixian Liao, Verena Blaschke, Jakob Prange, Senyu Li, David Ifeoluwa Adelani
The paper investigates whether multilingual language models transfer factual knowledge from one language to another during continued pretraining. Using an English-pretrained model continued on Persian data with systematically removed facts, the authors create SIFT, a dataset of 500 triples across 20 relations, split by cultural origin. Their findings indicate that factual transfer is minimal, especially for Persian-related facts, and that simple removal strategies or easy negative candidate sets can overestimate transfer.
By Romina Oji, Marc Braun, Marcel Bollmann, Marco Kuhlmann, Jenny Kunz
The paper introduces the first large‑scale benchmark dataset of Bangla idioms, along with a synthetic multiple‑choice question set for idiom meaning identification. It evaluates recent large language models on three idiom‑related tasks—paraphrasing, idiom span detection, and meaning identification—using zero‑shot and few‑shot prompting. Results show significant variability across models, with Phi‑4‑mini‑instruct best at paraphrasing, Kimi‑K2‑32b‑instruct excelling at span detection, and Gemini‑2.5‑flash leading in meaning identification.
By Mousumi Akter, Md. Faiyaz Abdullah Sayeedi, Nurul Labib Sayeedi, Swakkhar Shatabda
The paper introduces TriviaRoomQA, a multilingual benchmark of 3,300 parallel multiple-choice questions across 288 topics, plus an additional 5,340 French-only questions. It evaluates 30 open-weight large language models (7–70 B parameters) from various regions, finding strong performance on knowledge-intensive subjects like history and geography but weaker results on everyday popular‑culture topics such as celebrities, music, movies, and news. The study also shows that model performance varies across languages for the same questions, indicating that factual knowledge access is not always language‑independent.
By Anna Mosolova, Djam\'e Seddah