Large Reasoning Models Are (Not Yet) Multilingual Latent Reasoners
On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation
Abstract (arXiv)
Large reasoning models (LRMs) achieve strong performance on mathematical reasoning tasks, often attributed to their capability to generate explicit chain-of-thought (CoT) explanations. However, recent work shows that LRMs often arrive at the correct answer before completing these textual reasoning steps, indicating the presence of latent reasoning -- internal, non-verbal computation encoded in hidden states. While this phenomenon has been explored in English, its multilingual behavior remains largely unknown. In this paper, we conduct a systematic investigation of multilingual latent reasoning in LRMs across 11 languages. Using a truncation-based strategy, we examine how the correct answer emerges as the model is given only partial reasoning traces, allowing us to measure stepwise latent prediction formation. Our results reveal clear evidence of multilingual latent reasoning, though unevenly: strong in resource-rich languages, weaker in low-resource ones, and broadly less observable on harder benchmarks. To understand whether these differences reflect distinct internal mechanisms, we further perform representational analyses. Despite surface-level disparities, we find that the internal evolution of predictions is highly consistent across languages and broadly aligns with English -- a pattern suggesting an English-centered latent reasoning pathway.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 32 of its 71 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 6 Jan 2026.
Builds on
32 of 71 references.
Closest ancestors · 6
Same direction, newest first
- 2025Why Do Multilingual Reasoning Gaps Emerge in Reasoning Language Models?31 Oct
- 2025Beyond English-Centric Training: How Reinforcement Learning Improves Cross-Lingual Reasoning in LLMs28 Sep
- 2025Language Matters: How Do Multilingual Input and Reasoning Paths Affect Large Reasoning Models?23 May
- 2025Qwen3 Technical Report14 May
- 2025Crosslingual Reasoning through Test-Time Scaling8 May
- 2025From System 1 to System 2: A Survey of Reasoning Large Language Models24 Feb
Other references · 26
- 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
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- 2025s1: Simple test-time scalingcited by 1,341
- 2024OpenAI o1 System Cardcited by 1,244
- 2025Does Reinforcement Learning Really Incentivize Reasoning Capacity in LLMs Beyond the Base Model?cited by 982
- 2024Training Large Language Models to Reason in a Continuous Latent Spacecited by 797
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- 2023Eliciting Latent Predictions from Transformers with the Tuned Lenscited by 623
- 2024Do NOT Think That Much for 2+3=? On the Overthinking of o1-Like LLMscited by 570
14 more
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- 2025AIMO-2 Winning Solution: Building State-of-the-Art Mathematical Reasoning Models with OpenMathReasoning datasetcited by 174
- 2024Benchmarking Benchmark Leakage in Large Language Modelscited by 106
- 2025Reasoning Beyond Language: A Comprehensive Survey on Latent Chain-of-Thought Reasoningcited by 78
- 2025Demystifying Reasoning Dynamics with Mutual Information: Thinking Tokens are Information Peaks in LLM Reasoningcited by 51
- 2024Do language models plan ahead for future tokens?cited by 49
- 2025Is It Thinking or Cheating? Detecting Implicit Reward Hacking by Measuring Reasoning Effortcited by 27
- 2025Towards Understanding Distilled Reasoning Models: A Representational Approachcited by 26
- 2025Early Stopping Chain-of-thoughts in Large Language Modelscited by 20
- 2025Reinforcement Learning vs. Distillation: Understanding Accuracy and Capability in LLM Reasoningcited by 14
- 2024Systematically Analyzing Prompt Injection Vulnerabilities in Diverse LLM Architecturescited by 12
- 2025The Translation Barrier Hypothesis: Multilingual Generation with Large Language Models Suffers from Implicit Translation Failurecited by 10
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.
9 papers.
- 2026Crosslingual On-Policy Self-Distillation for Multilingual Reasoningcited by 10
- 2026What Makes Good Multilingual Reasoning? Disentangling Traces with Measurable Featurescited by 4
- 2026When Does a Language Model Commit? A Finite-Answer Theory of Pre-Verbalization Commitmentcited by 2
- 2026LLM Parameters for Math Across Languages: Shared or Separate?cited by 1
- 2026Is continuous CoT better suited for multi-lingual reasoning?cited by 0
- 2026Beyond Input Understanding: Diagnosing Multilingual Mathematical Reasoning with Directed Acyclic Trace Graphscited by 0
- 2026Understanding LLM Behavior in Multi-Target Cross-Lingual Summarizationcited by 0
- 2026PluraMath: Extending Mathematical Reasoning Evaluation Beyond High-Resource Languagescited by 0
- 2026Language-Conditioned Token and Reasoning Efficiency in Large Language Models: A Paired Cross-Lingual Study Protocolcited by 0
- 2026Language-Conditioned Token and Reasoning Efficiency in Large Language Models: A Paired Cross-Lingual Study Protocol3 Oct 2026
- 2026PluraMath: Extending Mathematical Reasoning Evaluation Beyond High-Resource Languages7 Jul 2026
- 2026LLM Parameters for Math Across Languages: Shared or Separate?16 Jun 2026
- 2026Understanding LLM Behavior in Multi-Target Cross-Lingual Summarization31 May 2026
- 2026Beyond Input Understanding: Diagnosing Multilingual Mathematical Reasoning with Directed Acyclic Trace Graphs26 May 2026
- 2026Crosslingual On-Policy Self-Distillation for Multilingual Reasoning10 May 2026
- 2026When Does a Language Model Commit? A Finite-Answer Theory of Pre-Verbalization Commitment7 May 2026
- 2026What Makes Good Multilingual Reasoning? Disentangling Traces with Measurable Features6 Apr 2026
- 2026Is continuous CoT better suited for multi-lingual reasoning?9 Mar 2026
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- 2022Language Models are Multilingual Chain-of-Thought Reasoners
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