# CALM: Unleashing the Cross-Lingual Self-Aligning Ability of Language Model Question Answering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18457 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.18457/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in LLM preference optimization methods, one of 10 directions in LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation.
- Builds on 22 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Jan 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation / [LLM preference optimization methods](https://mlsanity.com/alignment/llm-preference-optimization-methods/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11171/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [LlamaFactory: Unified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13372/) (2024)
- [What Disease does this Patient Have? A Large-scale Open Domain Question Answering Dataset from Medical Exams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13081/) (2020)
- [Can LLMs Express Their Uncertainty? An Empirical Evaluation of Confidence Elicitation in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13063/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models Can Self-Improve](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11610/) (2022)
- [Cross-Lingual Consistency of Factual Knowledge in Multilingual Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10378/) (2023)
- [SeaEval for Multilingual Foundation Models: From Cross-Lingual Alignment to Cultural Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04766/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Multilingual Large Language Models: Corpora, Alignment, and Bias](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00929/) (2024)
- [MAPO: Advancing Multilingual Reasoning through Multilingual Alignment-as-Preference Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.06838/) (2024)
- [Common Sense Beyond English: Evaluating and Improving Multilingual Language Models for Commonsense Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06937/) (2021)
- [Aligning LLMs with Individual Preferences via Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03642/) (2024)
- [Breaking Language Barriers in Multilingual Mathematical Reasoning: Insights and Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.20246/) (2023)
- [Do LVLMs Understand Charts? Analyzing and Correcting Factual Errors in Chart Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10160/) (2023)
- [Multilingual Pretraining and Instruction Tuning Improve Cross-Lingual Knowledge Alignment, But Only Shallowly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04659/) (2024)
- [CrossIn: An Efficient Instruction Tuning Approach for Cross-Lingual Knowledge Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11932/) (2024)
- [1+1>2: Can Large Language Models Serve as Cross-Lingual Knowledge Aggregators?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14721/) (2024)
- [PropaInsight: Toward Deeper Understanding of Propaganda in Terms of Techniques, Appeals, and Intent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18997/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [MMBoundary: Advancing MLLM Knowledge Boundary Awareness through Reasoning Step Confidence Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23224/) (2025)
- [Reasoning Path Divergence: A New Metric and Curation Strategy to Unlock LLM Diverse Thinking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26122/) (2025)
- [Diversity-Enhanced Reasoning for Subjective Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20187/) (2025)
- [Unveiling the Lack of LVLM Robustness to Fundamental Visual Variations: Why and Path Forward](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16727/) (2025)
- [Traveling Across Languages: Benchmarking Cross-Lingual Consistency in Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15075/) (2025)
- [Post-Training Language Models for Crosslingual Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04678/) (2026)
- [When Languages Disagree: Self-Evolving Multilingual LLM Judges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08092/) (2026)
- [Structuring the Space of Sociotechnical Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01250/) (2026)
- [Unlocking LLM Safeguards for Low-Resource Languages via Reasoning and Alignment with Minimal Training Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10677/) (2025)
- [A Systematic Evaluation of Cross-Lingual Consistency Enhancement Methods in Multilingual Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.04409/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are pretrained on extensive multilingual corpora to acquire both language-specific cultural knowledge and general knowledge. Ideally, while LLMs should provide consistent responses to culture-independent questions across languages, we observe significant performance disparities. To address this, we explore the Cross-Lingual Self-Aligning ability of Language Models (CALM) to align knowledge across languages. Specifically, for a given question, we sample multiple responses across different languages and select the most self-consistent response as the target, leaving the remaining responses as negative examples. We then employ direct preference optimization (DPO) to align the model's knowledge across different languages. Evaluations on the MEDQA and X-CSQA datasets demonstrate CALM's effectiveness in enhancing cross-lingual knowledge question answering, both in zero-shot and retrieval-augmented settings. We also found that increasing the number of languages involved in CALM training leads to higher accuracy and consistency. We offer a qualitative analysis of how cross-lingual consistency can enhance knowledge alignment and explore the method's generalizability.