Thank You, Stingray: Multilingual Large Language Models Can Not (Yet) Disambiguate Cross-Lingual Word Sense
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Abstract (arXiv)
Multilingual large language models (LLMs) have gained prominence, but concerns arise regarding their reliability beyond English. This study addresses the gap in cross-lingual semantic evaluation by introducing a novel benchmark for cross-lingual sense disambiguation, StingrayBench. In this paper, we demonstrate using false friends -- words that are orthographically similar but have completely different meanings in two languages -- as a possible approach to pinpoint the limitation of cross-lingual sense disambiguation in LLMs. We collect false friends in four language pairs, namely Indonesian-Malay, Indonesian-Tagalog, Chinese-Japanese, and English-German; and challenge LLMs to distinguish the use of them in context. In our analysis of various models, we observe they tend to be biased toward higher-resource languages. We also propose new metrics for quantifying the cross-lingual sense bias and comprehension based on our benchmark. Our work contributes to developing more diverse and inclusive language modeling, promoting fairer access for the wider multilingual community.
Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 31 of its 69 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Oct 2024.
Builds on
31 of 69 references.
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19 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 2.
4 papers.
- 2025FilBench: Can LLMs Understand and Generate Filipino?cited by 3
- 2025Prompt Balance Matters: Understanding How Imbalanced Few-Shot Learning Affects Multilingual Sense Disambiguation in LLMscited by 1
- 2026An Exploration-Analysis-Disambiguation Reasoning Framework for Word Sense Disambiguation with Low-Parameter LLMscited by 1
- 2026SwanNLP at SemEval-2026 Task 5: An LLM-based Framework for Plausibility Scoring in Narrative Word Sense Disambiguationcited by 0
- 2026SwanNLP at SemEval-2026 Task 5: An LLM-based Framework for Plausibility Scoring in Narrative Word Sense Disambiguation17 Apr 2026
- 2026An Exploration-Analysis-Disambiguation Reasoning Framework for Word Sense Disambiguation with Low-Parameter LLMs5 Mar 2026
- 2025Prompt Balance Matters: Understanding How Imbalanced Few-Shot Learning Affects Multilingual Sense Disambiguation in LLMs4 Oct 2025
- 2025FilBench: Can LLMs Understand and Generate Filipino?5 Aug 2025