Breaking Boundaries: Investigating the Effects of Model Editing on Cross-linguistic Performance

The integration of pretrained language models (PLMs) like BERT and GPT has revolutionized NLP, particularly for English, but it has also created linguistic imbalances. This paper strategically identifies the need for linguistic equity by examining several knowledge editing techniques in multilingual contexts. We evaluate the performance of models such as Mistral, TowerInstruct, OpenHathi, Tamil-Llama, and Kan-Llama across languages including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Hindi, Tamil, and Kannada. Our research identifies significant discrepancies in normal and merged models concerning cross-lingual consistency. We employ strategies like éach language for itself' (ELFI) and éach language for others' (ELFO) to stress-test these models. Our findings demonstrate the potential for LLMs to overcome linguistic barriers, laying the groundwork for future research in achieving linguistic inclusivity in AI technologies.

@article{banerjee2025_2406.11139,
  title={ Breaking Boundaries: Investigating the Effects of Model Editing on Cross-linguistic Performance },
  author={ Somnath Banerjee and Avik Halder and Rajarshi Mandal and Sayan Layek and Ian Soboroff and Rima Hazra and Animesh Mukherjee },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.11139},
  year={ 2025 }
}