mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Dictionary-based Phrase-level Prompting of Large Language Models for Machine Translation

arXiv 2302.07856 ↗First posted 15 Feb 2023cs.CL cs.LGcited by 74

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Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate remarkable machine translation (MT) abilities via prompting, even though they were not explicitly trained for this task. However, even given the incredible quantities of data they are trained on, LLMs can struggle to translate inputs with rare words, which are common in low resource or domain transfer scenarios. We show that LLM prompting can provide an effective solution for rare words as well, by using prior knowledge from bilingual dictionaries to provide control hints in the prompts. We propose a novel method, DiPMT, that provides a set of possible translations for a subset of the input words, thereby enabling fine-grained phrase-level prompted control of the LLM. Extensive experiments show that DiPMT outperforms the baseline both in low-resource MT, as well as for out-of-domain MT. We further provide a qualitative analysis of the benefits and limitations of this approach, including the overall level of controllability that is achieved.

Key facts. Cited by 74 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 25 of its 30 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Feb 2023.

Builds on

25 of 30 references.

References · 25

  1. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  2. 2022OPT: Open Pre-trained Transformer Language Modelscited by 3,464
  3. 2022BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Modelcited by 1,968
  4. 2018A Call for Clarity in Reporting BLEU Scorescited by 1,790
  5. 2020Stanza: A Python Natural Language Processing Toolkit for Many Human Languagescited by 719
  6. 2021Prompt Programming for Large Language Models: Beyond the Few-Shot Paradigmcited by 599
  7. 2021The FLORES-101 Evaluation Benchmark for Low-Resource and Multilingual Machine Translationcited by 556
  8. 2021Datasets: A Community Library for Natural Language Processingcited by 526
  9. 2017Word Translation Without Parallel Datacited by 480
  10. 2017Six Challenges for Neural Machine Translationcited by 334
  11. 2017Lexically Constrained Decoding for Sequence Generation Using Grid Beam Searchcited by 234
  12. 2020Nearest Neighbor Machine Translationcited by 209
13 more
  1. 2018Fast Lexically Constrained Decoding with Dynamic Beam Allocation for Neural Machine Translationcited by 181
  2. 2022In-context Examples Selection for Machine Translationcited by 172
  3. 2020Unsupervised Domain Clusters in Pretrained Language Modelscited by 160
  4. 2020SimAlign: High Quality Word Alignments without Parallel Training Data using Static and Contextualized Embeddingscited by 155
  5. 2022Prompting PaLM for Translation: Assessing Strategies and Performancecited by 144
  6. 2019Training Neural Machine Translation To Apply Terminology Constraintscited by 73
  7. 2019Code-Switching for Enhancing NMT with Pre-Specified Translationcited by 53
  8. 2016Incorporating Discrete Translation Lexicons into Neural Machine Translationcited by 33
  9. 2022Using natural language prompts for machine translationcited by 27
  10. 2021Non-Parametric Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Neural Machine Translationcited by 20
  11. 2021Bilingual Lexicon Induction via Unsupervised Bitext Construction and Word Alignmentcited by 19
  12. 2016Bridging Neural Machine Translation and Bilingual Dictionariescited by 18
  13. 2022Zero-shot Domain Adaptation for Neural Machine Translation with Retrieved Phrase-level Promptscited by 7

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 16; 2024: 32; 2025: 17; 2026: 9.

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  1. 2023Document-Level Machine Translation with Large Language Modelscited by 90
  2. 2023Large language models effectively leverage document-level context for literary translation, but critical errors persistcited by 80
  3. 2023A Benchmark for Learning to Translate a New Language from One Grammar Bookcited by 74
  4. 2023Benchmarking Machine Translation with Cultural Awarenesscited by 53
  5. 2023Exploring Human-Like Translation Strategy with Large Language Modelscited by 44
  6. 2024Fine-tuning Large Language Models for Domain-specific Machine Translationcited by 43
  7. 2023ParroT: Translating during Chat using Large Language Models tuned with Human Translation and Feedbackcited by 34
  8. 2024Teaching Large Language Models an Unseen Language on the Flycited by 29
  9. 2024TasTe: Teaching Large Language Models to Translate through Self-Reflectioncited by 27
  10. 2024DelTA: An Online Document-Level Translation Agent Based on Multi-Level Memorycited by 27
  11. 2024Can LLMs Really Learn to Translate a Low-Resource Language from One Grammar Book?cited by 23
  12. 2023Fine-tuning Large Language Models for Adaptive Machine Translationcited by 21
38 more
  1. 2023Domain Terminology Integration into Machine Translation: Leveraging Large Language Modelscited by 17
  2. 2024Shortcomings of LLMs for Low-Resource Translation: Retrieval and Understanding are Both the Problemcited by 17
  3. 2023Chain-of-Dictionary Prompting Elicits Translation in Large Language Modelscited by 16
  4. 2024Fine-Tuning Large Language Models to Translate: Will a Touch of Noisy Data in Misaligned Languages Suffice?cited by 16
  5. 2023Deliberate then Generate: Enhanced Prompting Framework for Text Generationcited by 13
  6. 2025Compositional Translation: A Novel LLM-based Approach for Low-resource Machine Translationcited by 13
  7. 2023Explain-then-Translate: An Analysis on Improving Program Translation with Self-generated Explanationscited by 12
  8. 2024Low-Resource Machine Translation through Retrieval-Augmented LLM Prompting: A Study on the Mambai Languagecited by 12
  9. 2025Understanding In-Context Machine Translation for Low-Resource Languages: A Case Study on Manchucited by 12
  10. 2024Large Language Model for Multi-Domain Translation: Benchmarking and Domain CoT Fine-tuningcited by 11
  11. 2025Lost in Literalism: How Supervised Training Shapes Translationese in LLMscited by 11
  12. 2024Fairness Definitions in Language Models Explainedcited by 10
  13. 2024A Preference-driven Paradigm for Enhanced Translation with Large Language Modelscited by 9
  14. 2023Terminology-Aware Translation with Constrained Decoding and Large Language Model Promptingcited by 8
  15. 2023Bilex Rx: Lexical Data Augmentation for Massively Multilingual Machine Translationcited by 7
  16. 2024Efficient Terminology Integration for LLM-based Translation in Specialized Domainscited by 7
  17. 2025Redefining Machine Translation on Social Network Services with Large Language Modelscited by 6
  18. 2024A Reality check of the benefits of LLM in businesscited by 5
  19. 2024GrammaMT: Improving Machine Translation with Grammar-Informed In-Context Learningcited by 5
  20. 2025Is Small Language Model the Silver Bullet to Low-Resource Languages Machine Translation?cited by 5
  21. 2025Multilingual Prompt Engineering in Large Language Models: A Survey Across NLP Taskscited by 5
  22. 2024Self-Augmented In-Context Learning for Unsupervised Word Translationcited by 4
  23. 2025Leveraging Domain Knowledge at Inference Time for LLM Translation: Retrieval versus Generationcited by 4
  24. 2025Read it in Two Steps: Translating Extremely Low-Resource Languages with Code-Augmented Grammar Bookscited by 4
  25. 2024Tuning LLMs with Contrastive Alignment Instructions for Machine Translation in Unseen, Low-resource Languagescited by 3
  26. 2024Language Modelling Approaches to Adaptive Machine Translationcited by 3
  27. 2024Thinker-DDM: Modeling Deliberation for Machine Translation with a Drift-Diffusion Processcited by 3
  28. 2024Prompting Large Language Models with Human Error Markings for Self-Correcting Machine Translationcited by 3
  29. 2024Mufu: Multilingual Fused Learning for Low-Resource Translation with LLMcited by 3
  30. 2024Domain-Specific Translation with Open-Source Large Language Models: Resource-Oriented Analysiscited by 3
  31. 2025LLM-based Generative Error Correction for Rare Words with Synthetic Data and Phonetic Contextcited by 3
  32. 2023Paradigm Shift in Sustainability Disclosure Analysis: Empowering Stakeholders with CHATREPORT, a Language Model-Based Toolcited by 2
  33. 2023On Bilingual Lexicon Induction with Large Language Modelscited by 2
  34. 2024C3Bench: A Comprehensive Classical Chinese Understanding Benchmark for Large Language Modelscited by 2
  35. 2024CRAT: A Multi-Agent Framework for Causality-Enhanced Reflective and Retrieval-Augmented Translation with Large Language Modelscited by 2
  36. 2024Refining Translations with LLMs: A Constraint-Aware Iterative Prompting Approachcited by 2
  37. 2024A Context-aware Framework for Translation-mediated Conversationscited by 2
  38. 2025LLMs for Translation: Historical, Low-Resourced Languages and Contemporary AI Modelscited by 2

50 most cited of 74 All 74 (JSON)