# Cross-lingual Offensive Language Detection: A Systematic Review of Datasets, Transfer Approaches and Challenges

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.09244 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09244/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 75 of its 198 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 75)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning for Fast Adaptation of Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03400/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Cross-lingual Representation Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02116/) (2019)
- [Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01652/) (2021)
- [Deep contextualized word representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05365/) (2018)
- [mT5: A massively multilingual pre-trained text-to-text transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11934/) (2020)
- [Multilingual Denoising Pre-training for Neural Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08210/) (2020)
- [Automated Hate Speech Detection and the Problem of Offensive Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04009/) (2017)
- [Is BERT Really Robust? A Strong Baseline for Natural Language Attack on Text Classification and Entailment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11932/) (2019)
- [Word Translation Without Parallel Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.04087/) (2017)
- [Massively Multilingual Sentence Embeddings for Zero-Shot Cross-Lingual Transfer and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.10464/) (2018)
- [HateXplain: A Benchmark Dataset for Explainable Hate Speech Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10289/) (2020)
- [Learning Word Vectors for 157 Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.06893/) (2018)
- [Unsupervised Machine Translation Using Monolingual Corpora Only](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00043/) (2017)
- [Large Scale Crowdsourcing and Characterization of Twitter Abusive Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00393/) (2018)
- [Learning from the Worst: Dynamically Generated Datasets to Improve Online Hate Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15761/) (2020)
- [Ex Machina: Personal Attacks Seen at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.08914/) (2016)
- [SemEval-2019 Task 6: Identifying and Categorizing Offensive Language in Social Media (OffensEval)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08983/) (2019)
- [Hate Speech Dataset from a White Supremacy Forum](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04444/) (2018)
- [Directions in Abusive Language Training Data: Garbage In, Garbage Out](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01670/) (2020)
- [SemEval-2020 Task 12: Multilingual Offensive Language Identification in Social Media (OffensEval 2020)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07235/) (2020)
- [Multilingual and Multi-Aspect Hate Speech Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.11049/) (2019)
- [CONAN -- COunter NArratives through Nichesourcing: a Multilingual Dataset of Responses to Fight Online Hate Speech](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03270/) (2019)
- [Measuring the Reliability of Hate Speech Annotations: The Case of the European Refugee Crisis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.08118/) (2017)
- [Offline bilingual word vectors, orthogonal transformations and the inverted softmax](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.03859/) (2017)
- [Contextualizing Hate Speech Classifiers with Post-hoc Explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.02439/) (2020)
- [COLD: A Benchmark for Chinese Offensive Language Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06025/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Breaking mBad! Supervised Fine-tuning for Cross-Lingual Detoxification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16722/) (2025)
- [Aligned in Form, Not in Meaning: The Comprehension - Containment Decoupling of LLM Safety in Low-Resource Bangla Derogatory Speech](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.02941/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The growing prevalence and rapid evolution of offensive language in social media amplify the complexities of detection, particularly highlighting the challenges in identifying such content across diverse languages. This survey presents a systematic and comprehensive exploration of Cross-Lingual Transfer Learning (CLTL) techniques in offensive language detection in social media. Our study stands as the first holistic overview to focus exclusively on the cross-lingual scenario in this domain. We analyse 67 relevant papers and categorise these studies across various dimensions, including the characteristics of multilingual datasets used, the cross-lingual resources employed, and the specific CLTL strategies implemented. According to "what to transfer", we also summarise three main CLTL transfer approaches: instance, feature, and parameter transfer. Additionally, we shed light on the current challenges and future research opportunities in this field. Furthermore, we have made our survey resources available online, including two comprehensive tables that provide accessible references to the multilingual datasets and CLTL methods used in the reviewed literature.