Leveraging LLMs for MT in Crisis Scenarios: a blueprint for low-resource languages

In an evolving landscape of crisis communication, the need for robust and adaptable Machine Translation (MT) systems is more pressing than ever, particularly for low-resource languages. This study presents a comprehensive exploration of leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and Multilingual LLMs (MLLMs) to enhance MT capabilities in such scenarios. By focusing on the unique challenges posed by crisis situations where speed, accuracy, and the ability to handle a wide range of languages are paramount, this research outlines a novel approach that combines the cutting-edge capabilities of LLMs with fine-tuning techniques and community-driven corpus development strategies. At the core of this study is the development and empirical evaluation of MT systems tailored for two low-resource language pairs, illustrating the process from initial model selection and fine-tuning through to deployment. Bespoke systems are developed and modelled on the recent Covid-19 pandemic. The research highlights the importance of community involvement in creating highly specialised, crisis-specific datasets and compares custom GPTs with NLLB-adapted MLLM models. It identifies fine-tuned MLLM models as offering superior performance compared with their LLM counterparts. A scalable and replicable model for rapid MT system development in crisis scenarios is outlined. Our approach enhances the field of humanitarian technology by offering a blueprint for developing multilingual communication systems during emergencies.

How Much Data is Enough Data? Fine-Tuning Large Language Models for In-House Translation: Performance Evaluation Across Multiple Dataset Sizes

Decoder-only LLMs have shown impressive performance in MT due to their ability to learn from extensive datasets and generate high-quality translations. However, LLMs often struggle with the nuances and style required for organisation-specific translation. In this study, we explore the effectiveness of fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly Llama 3 8B Instruct, leveraging translation memories (TMs), as a valuable resource to enhance accuracy and efficiency. We investigate the impact of fine-tuning the Llama 3 model using TMs from a specific organisation in the software sector. Our experiments cover five translation directions across languages of varying resource levels (English to Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, German, Finnish, and Korean). We analyse diverse sizes of training datasets (1k to 207k segments) to evaluate their influence on translation quality. We fine-tune separate models for each training set and evaluate their performance based on automatic metrics, BLEU, chrF++, TER, and COMET. Our findings reveal improvement in translation performance with larger datasets across all metrics. On average, BLEU and COMET scores increase by 13 and 25 points, respectively, on the largest training set against the baseline model. Notably, there is a performance deterioration in comparison with the baseline model when fine-tuning on only 1k and 2k examples; however, we observe a substantial improvement as the training dataset size increases. The study highlights the potential of integrating TMs with LLMs to create bespoke translation models tailored to the specific needs of businesses, thus enhancing translation quality and reducing turn-around times. This approach offers a valuable insight for organisations seeking to leverage TMs and LLMs for optimal translation outcomes, especially in narrower domains.

Design of an Open-Source Architecture for Neural Machine Translation

adaptNMT is an open-source application that offers a streamlined approach to the development and deployment of Recurrent Neural Networks and Transformer models. This application is built upon the widely-adopted OpenNMT ecosystem, and is particularly useful for new entrants to the field, as it simplifies the setup of the development environment and creation of train, validation, and test splits. The application offers a graphing feature that illustrates the progress of model training, and employs SentencePiece for creating subword segmentation models. Furthermore, the application provides an intuitive user interface that facilitates hyperparameter customization. Notably, a single-click model development approach has been implemented, and models developed by adaptNMT can be evaluated using a range of metrics. To encourage eco-friendly research, adaptNMT incorporates a green report that flags the power consumption and kgCO${_2}$ emissions generated during model development. The application is freely available.

gaHealth: An English-Irish Bilingual Corpus of Health Data

Machine Translation is a mature technology for many high-resource language pairs. However in the context of low-resource languages, there is a paucity of parallel data datasets available for developing translation models. Furthermore, the development of datasets for low-resource languages often focuses on simply creating the largest possible dataset for generic translation. The benefits and development of smaller in-domain datasets can easily be overlooked. To assess the merits of using in-domain data, a dataset for the specific domain of health was developed for the low-resource English to Irish language pair. Our study outlines the process used in developing the corpus and empirically demonstrates the benefits of using an in-domain dataset for the health domain. In the context of translating health-related data, models developed using the gaHealth corpus demonstrated a maximum BLEU score improvement of 22.2 points (40%) when compared with top performing models from the LoResMT2021 Shared Task. Furthermore, we define linguistic guidelines for developing gaHealth, the first bilingual corpus of health data for the Irish language, which we hope will be of use to other creators of low-resource data sets. gaHealth is now freely available online and is ready to be explored for further research.

Transformers for Low-Resource Languages:Is Féidir Linn!

The Transformer model is the state-of-the-art in Machine Translation. However, in general, neural translation models often under perform on language pairs with insufficient training data. As a consequence, relatively few experiments have been carried out using this architecture on low-resource language pairs. In this study, hyperparameter optimization of Transformer models in translating the low-resource English-Irish language pair is evaluated. We demonstrate that choosing appropriate parameters leads to considerable performance improvements. Most importantly, the correct choice of subword model is shown to be the biggest driver of translation performance. SentencePiece models using both unigram and BPE approaches were appraised. Variations on model architectures included modifying the number of layers, testing various regularisation techniques and evaluating the optimal number of heads for attention. A generic 55k DGT corpus and an in-domain 88k public admin corpus were used for evaluation. A Transformer optimized model demonstrated a BLEU score improvement of 7.8 points when compared with a baseline RNN model. Improvements were observed across a range of metrics, including TER, indicating a substantially reduced post editing effort for Transformer optimized models with 16k BPE subword models. Bench-marked against Google Translate, our translation engines demonstrated significant improvements. The question of whether or not Transformers can be used effectively in a low-resource setting of English-Irish translation has been addressed. Is f\'eidir linn - yes we can.

Human Evaluation of English--Irish Transformer-Based NMT

In this study, a human evaluation is carried out on how hyperparameter settings impact the quality of Transformer-based Neural Machine Translation (NMT) for the low-resourced English--Irish pair. SentencePiece models using both Byte Pair Encoding (BPE) and unigram approaches were appraised. Variations in model architectures included modifying the number of layers, evaluating the optimal number of heads for attention and testing various regularisation techniques. The greatest performance improvement was recorded for a Transformer-optimized model with a 16k BPE subword model. Compared with a baseline Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) model, a Transformer-optimized model demonstrated a BLEU score improvement of 7.8 points. When benchmarked against Google Translate, our translation engines demonstrated significant improvements. Furthermore, a quantitative fine-grained manual evaluation was conducted which compared the performance of machine translation systems. Using the Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) error taxonomy, a human evaluation of the error types generated by an RNN-based system and a Transformer-based system was explored. Our findings show the best-performing Transformer system significantly reduces both accuracy and fluency errors when compared with an RNN-based model.

adaptNMT: an open-source, language-agnostic development environment for Neural Machine Translation

adaptNMT streamlines all processes involved in the development and deployment of RNN and Transformer neural translation models. As an open-source application, it is designed for both technical and non-technical users who work in the field of machine translation. Built upon the widely-adopted OpenNMT ecosystem, the application is particularly useful for new entrants to the field since the setup of the development environment and creation of train, validation and test splits is greatly simplified. Graphing, embedded within the application, illustrates the progress of model training, and SentencePiece is used for creating subword segmentation models. Hyperparameter customization is facilitated through an intuitive user interface, and a single-click model development approach has been implemented. Models developed by adaptNMT can be evaluated using a range of metrics, and deployed as a translation service within the application. To support eco-friendly research in the NLP space, a green report also flags the power consumption and kgCO$_{2}$ emissions generated during model development. The application is freely available.

adaptMLLM: Fine-Tuning Multilingual Language Models on Low-Resource Languages with Integrated LLM Playgrounds

The advent of Multilingual Language Models (MLLMs) and Large Language Models has spawned innovation in many areas of natural language processing. Despite the exciting potential of this technology, its impact on developing high-quality Machine Translation (MT) outputs for low-resource languages remains relatively under-explored. Furthermore, an open-source application, dedicated to both fine-tuning MLLMs and managing the complete MT workflow for low-resources languages, remains unavailable. We aim to address these imbalances through the development of adaptMLLM, which streamlines all processes involved in the fine-tuning of MLLMs for MT. This open-source application is tailored for developers, translators, and users who are engaged in MT. An intuitive interface allows for easy customisation of hyperparameters, and the application offers a range of metrics for model evaluation and the capability to deploy models as a translation service directly within the application. As a multilingual tool, we used adaptMLLM to fine-tune models for two low-resource language pairs: English to Irish (EN$\leftrightarrow$GA) and English to Marathi (EN$\leftrightarrow$MR). Compared with baselines from the LoResMT2021 Shared Task, the adaptMLLM system demonstrated significant improvements. In the EN$\rightarrow$GA direction, an improvement of 5.2 BLEU points was observed and an increase of 40.5 BLEU points was recorded in the GA$\rightarrow$EN direction. Significant improvements in the translation performance of the EN$\leftrightarrow$MR pair were also observed notably in the MR$\rightarrow$EN direction with an increase of 21.3 BLEU points. Finally, a fine-grained human evaluation of the MLLM output on the EN$\rightarrow$GA pair was conducted using the Multidimensional Quality Metrics and Scalar Quality Metrics error taxonomies. The application and models are freely available.

Machine Translation in the Covid domain: an English-Irish case study for LoResMT 2021

Translation models for the specific domain of translating Covid data from English to Irish were developed for the LoResMT 2021 shared task. Domain adaptation techniques, using a Covid-adapted generic 55k corpus from the Directorate General of Translation, were applied. Fine-tuning, mixed fine-tuning and combined dataset approaches were compared with models trained on an extended in-domain dataset. As part of this study, an English-Irish dataset of Covid related data, from the Health and Education domains, was developed. The highest-performing model used a Transformer architecture trained with an extended in-domain Covid dataset. In the context of this study, we have demonstrated that extending an 8k in-domain baseline dataset by just 5k lines improved the BLEU score by 27 points.

Fine-tuning Large Language Models for Adaptive Machine Translation

This paper presents the outcomes of fine-tuning Mistral 7B, a general-purpose large language model (LLM), for adaptive machine translation (MT). The fine-tuning process involves utilising a combination of zero-shot and one-shot translation prompts within the medical domain. The primary objective is to enhance real-time adaptive MT capabilities of Mistral 7B, enabling it to adapt translations to the required domain at inference time. The results, particularly for Spanish-to-English MT, showcase the efficacy of the fine-tuned model, demonstrating quality improvements in both zero-shot and one-shot translation scenarios, surpassing Mistral 7B's baseline performance. Notably, the fine-tuned Mistral outperforms ChatGPT "gpt-3.5-turbo" in zero-shot translation while achieving comparable one-shot translation quality. Moreover, the zero-shot translation of the fine-tuned Mistral matches NLLB 3.3B's performance, and its one-shot translation quality surpasses that of NLLB 3.3B. These findings emphasise the significance of fine-tuning efficient LLMs like Mistral 7B to yield high-quality zero-shot translations comparable to task-oriented models like NLLB 3.3B. Additionally, the adaptive gains achieved in one-shot translation are comparable to those of commercial LLMs such as ChatGPT. Our experiments demonstrate that, with a relatively small dataset of 20,000 segments that incorporate a mix of zero-shot and one-shot prompts, fine-tuning significantly enhances Mistral's in-context learning ability, especially for real-time adaptive MT.