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

Somnath Banerjee, Avik Halder, Rajarshi Mandal, Sayan Layek, Ian Soboroff, Rima Hazra, Animesh Mukherjee


Abstract
Pretrained language models (PLMs) have revolutionized NLP but amplify linguistic inequities in multilingual applications. While prior studies focused on transformer architectures such as BERT, we evaluate large language models (LLMs) including Mistral, TowerInstruct, OpenHathi, Tamil-Llama, and Kan-Llama. Through rigorous testing across eight languages spanning high-resource (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish) and low-resource (Hindi, Tamil, Kannada) settings, we reveal systemic failures in preserving multilingual reliability and adaptability. Using paradigms like each language for itself’ (ELFI) and each language for others’ (ELFO), we highlight the inability of current LLMs to bridge linguistic divides. Even model merging fail to mitigate these gaps, exposing fundamental limitations. These findings emphasize the critical need for reimagining AI architectures to deliver true linguistic inclusivity and equitable performance across diverse languages.
Anthology ID:
2025.naacl-industry.17
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 3: Industry Track)
Month:
April
Year:
2025
Address:
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Editors:
Weizhu Chen, Yi Yang, Mohammad Kachuee, Xue-Yong Fu
Venue:
NAACL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
194–209
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URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/Ingest-2025-COMPUTEL/2025.naacl-industry.17/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Somnath Banerjee, Avik Halder, Rajarshi Mandal, Sayan Layek, Ian Soboroff, Rima Hazra, and Animesh Mukherjee. 2025. Breaking Boundaries: Investigating the Effects of Model Editing on Cross-linguistic Performance. In Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 3: Industry Track), pages 194–209, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Breaking Boundaries: Investigating the Effects of Model Editing on Cross-linguistic Performance (Banerjee et al., NAACL 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/Ingest-2025-COMPUTEL/2025.naacl-industry.17.pdf