The paper titled "Safety Alignment Illusion: The Cross-Lingual Safety Gap in LLMs" highlights that current safety alignment training for large language models is predominantly English-centric, leading to failures in non‑English languages. It introduces INCLUDE, a multilingual benchmark with 2,604 prompts in six languages (English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Hinglish) to measure Indian‑centric socio‑cultural biases. Evaluation of ten open‑ and closed‑source LLMs shows that Bengali models exhibit the highest bias scores among open‑source models, while English shows the lowest bias in open‑source but the highest in closed‑source models.
By Namya Bhatnagar
Safety alignment in large language models (LLMs) is largely developed in English, assuming these safeguards generalize across multilingual settings. However, this assumption remains underexplored and exposes a vulnerability in low-resource languages.
arXiv:2608.21775v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in real-world applications, yet they remain vulnerable to generating harmful content. From adver...
By Afshin Orojlooyjadid, Hitesh Patel
arXiv:2608. 14577v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Frontier large language models (LLMs) safety evaluation has largely treated harmful generation as an attack outcome rather than as an object of analysis.
By Zhouyuan Ma, Yutao Wu, Hanxun Huang, Xiang Zheng, Xiao Liu, Yixin Cao, Zuxuan Wu, Xingjun Ma, Yu-Gang Jiang
The paper "Ghaib in Translation" investigates how large language models (LLMs) handle Urdu, a widely spoken language that is largely absent from safety evaluations. Five prominent LLMs—GPT‑4o, Claude Sonnet 4.5, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Qwen‑2.5, and Llama‑3.1—were tested on six datasets covering Nastaliq Urdu, Roman Urdu, English, and code‑switched Urdu‑English. The study found significant label instability between original‑script and English‑translation classifications, with missed‑in‑Urdu rates ranging from 2.4% to 9.9% (median 4.3%). A review of 205 papers across nine ALW/WOAH editions revealed no dedicated Urdu research, underscoring the language’s neglect in current safety research.
By Fawzia Zehra (Fuzzy), Kara-Isitt, Sonal Khosla, Stephen Swift
arXiv:2608.21880v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Bangla large language model (LLM) safety is difficult to evaluate with English-centric or standard-script benchmarks because Bangla users routinely wri...
By Md. Rakibul Hassan, Muhammad Iqbal Hossain
arXiv:2607. 15861v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Moderation systems increasingly rely on external toxicity tools, but those tools are unreliable under code-mixing, transliteration, slang, and language mismatch.
By Indraveni Chebolu, Rohan Singh, Arnab Mallick, Harmesh Rana
arXiv:2608.21985v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: As the adoption of large language models (LLMs) grows in Arabic-speaking regions, ensuring their safety and cultural alignment is increasingly critical...
By Fidaa Abed, Haidar Khan, M Saiful Bari, Babar Khan, Abdalghani Abujabal
arXiv:2606. 01322v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Safety evaluation of Large Language Models (LLMs) remains heavily English-centric, leaving Low-Resource Languages (LRLs), particularly African ones, critically underexplored.
By Victor Akinode, Senyu Li, Wassim Hamidouche, Waqas Zamir, Inbal Becker-Reshef, David Ifeoluwa Adelani
arXiv:2606. 28843v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Fine-tuning a large language model is a ubiquitous method for enhancing its capability on a specific downstream task.
By Will Hawkins, Kaivalya Rawal, Jonathan Rystr{\o}m, Stratis Tsirtsis, Zihao Fu, Greta Warren, Ryan Brown, Eoin Delaney, Sandra Wachter, Brent Mittelstadt, Chris Russell
arXiv:2608. 14626v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved substantial progress in safety alignment, yet their safety guarantees remain significantly weaker in low-resource and multilingual settings than in high-resource languages.
By Valdini Douglace Lemofouet, Blessing Ngozi Uzor, Paula Chikaodinaka Anyanwu, Danielle Blanche Kapsa, Sukairaj Hafiz Imam, P Sam Sahil, Abigail Oppong, Tassallah Abdullahi, Clemencia Siro, Idris Abdulmumin, Seid Muhie Yimam, Shamsuddeen Hassan Muhammad
Multilingual safety evaluation of large language models (LLMs) has predominantly relied on direct translation (DT) of English benchmarks into target languages - an approach that converts surface-level linguistic form while failing to reflect the cultural context embedded in threat scenarios, social norms, and legal frameworks. We construct paired DT and culturally-adapted (CA) datasets via 1:1 seed matching for four languages - Korean (KO), Japanese (JA), Thai (TH), and Khmer (KM) - and compare Attack Success Rate (ASR) and Cultural Realism scores across four open-source LLM.