Dongjun Kim Upstage, Jeongho Yoon Korea University, Chanjun Park Soongsil University, Heuiseok Lim
Dense retrieval in multilingual settings often searches over mixed-language collections, yet multilingual embeddings encode language identity alongside semantics. This language signal can inflate similarity for same-language pairs and crowd out relevant evidence written in other languages. We propose LANGSAE EDITING, a post-hoc sparse autoencoder trained on pooled embeddings that enables controllable removal of language-identity signal directly in vector space. The method identifies language-associated latent units using cross-language activation statistics, suppresses these units at inference time, and reconstructs embeddings in the original dimensionality, making it compatible with existing vector databases without retraining the base encoder or re-encoding raw text. Experiments across multiple languages show consistent improvements in ranking quality and cross-language coverage, with especially strong gains for script-distinct languages.
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cs.CL
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表
Weihua Zheng, Zhengyuan Liu Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, Tanmoy Chakraborty Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Weiwen Xu Alibaba Group, Xiaoxue Gao, Bryan Chen Zhengyu Tan, Bowei Zou A*STAR, Chang Liu Shanghai University of Finance and Economics 等 35 位作者
The global deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) underscores the urgent need to evaluate their cultural alignment. However, assessing genuine “cultural awareness” across modalities (text, vision, speech) and languages remains a significant challenge. To comprehensively investigate this domain, we propose MMAC, a systematic framework that encompasses a tri-modally aligned cultural benchmark creation pipeline and a five-dimensional evaluation protocol to assess cross-country awareness disparities, evaluate cross-lingual and cross-modal consistency, and verify cultural knowledge generalization and grounding validity. Given the prevailing Western cultural bias in current models, we focus on 8 Asian countries as our dataset foundation to more acutely reveal potential cultural deficiencies in LLMs. Our dataset, MMAC-bench, features 27,000 human-curated questions across 10 languages. Crucially, it is the first dataset aligned at the input level across text, image, and speech, enabling direct cross-modal transfer tests. Each question consists of multiple-choice options accompanied by open-ended generated explanations, where 79% require multi-step reasoning grounded in cultural context, moving beyond simple memorization. We probe the causes of modal divergence, offering insights into fostering culturally robust MLLMs.
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cs.CL · cs.CV
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表