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Toward Culturally Grounded Natural Language Processing

arXiv 2603.26013 ↗First posted 27 Mar 2026cs.CLcited by 0

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Abstract (arXiv)

Multilingual NLP is often treated as a route to global inclusion, but linguistic coverage and cultural competence frequently diverge. This paper synthesizes over 50 papers spanning multilingual performance inequality, cross-lingual transfer, culture-aware evaluation, cultural alignment, multimodal benchmarks, benchmark-design critique, and community-grounded data practices. Across this literature, training data coverage remains important, but outcomes are also shaped by tokenization, prompt language, translated benchmark design, culturally grounded supervision, modality, and who authors or validates evaluation data. We argue that culturally grounded NLP should move beyond treating languages as isolated rows in benchmark tables and instead model communicative ecologies: the institutions, scripts, domains, modalities, and communities through which language is used. We propose a layered evaluation and reporting agenda centered on representation audits, mixed elicitation, ecological validity, community validation, adaptation provenance, within-language variation, and maintenance of living cultural resources.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 46 of its 59 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Mar 2026.

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46 of 59 references.

References · 46

  1. 2020The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP Worldcited by 789
  2. 2024Global MMLU: Understanding and Addressing Cultural and Linguistic Biases in Multilingual Evaluationcited by 181
  3. 2024Towards Measuring and Modeling "Culture" in LLMs: A Surveycited by 166
  4. 2020Participatory Research for Low-resourced Machine Translation: A Case Study in African Languagescited by 159
  5. 2023Having Beer after Prayer? Measuring Cultural Bias in Large Language Modelscited by 153
  6. 2023SIB-200: A Simple, Inclusive, and Big Evaluation Dataset for Topic Classification in 200+ Languages and Dialectscited by 149
  7. 2024Investigating Cultural Alignment of Large Language Modelscited by 140
  8. 2023Cultural Alignment in Large Language Models: An Explanatory Analysis Based on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensionscited by 111
  9. 2024Survey of Cultural Awareness in Language Models: Text and Beyondcited by 101
  10. 2024Benchmarking Vision Language Models for Cultural Understandingcited by 100
  11. 2023Tokenization Impacts Multilingual Language Modeling: Assessing Vocabulary Allocation and Overlap Across Languagescited by 61
  12. 2024WorldValuesBench: A Large-Scale Benchmark Dataset for Multi-Cultural Value Awareness of Language Modelscited by 59
34 more
  1. 2023Towards a Common Understanding of Contributing Factors for Cross-Lingual Transfer in Multilingual Language Models: A Reviewcited by 50
  2. 2024DIALECTBENCH: A NLP Benchmark for Dialects, Varieties, and Closely-Related Languagescited by 49
  3. 2024Evaluating Cultural and Social Awareness of LLM Web Agentscited by 43
  4. 2025Culture is Not Trivia: Sociocultural Theory for Cultural NLPcited by 40
  5. 2024WorldCuisines: A Massive-Scale Benchmark for Multilingual and Multicultural Visual Question Answering on Global Cuisinescited by 39
  6. 2025Multilingual != Multicultural: Evaluating Gaps Between Multilingual Capabilities and Cultural Alignment in LLMscited by 39
  7. 2024Self-Pluralising Culture Alignment for Large Language Modelscited by 31
  8. 2025Break the Checkbox: Challenging Closed-Style Evaluations of Cultural Alignment in LLMscited by 26
  9. 2023CDEval: A Benchmark for Measuring the Cultural Dimensions of Large Language Modelscited by 23
  10. 2025On The Origin of Cultural Biases in Language Models: From Pre-training Data to Linguistic Phenomenacited by 21
  11. 2025Cultural Learning-Based Culture Adaptation of Language Modelscited by 16
  12. 2025Grounding Multilingual Multimodal LLMs With Cultural Knowledgecited by 16
  13. 2025GIMMICK -- Globally Inclusive Multimodal Multitask Cultural Knowledge Benchmarkingcited by 15
  14. 2025CARE: Multilingual Human Preference Learning for Cultural Awarenesscited by 15
  15. 2024What Drives Performance in Multilingual Language Models?cited by 14
  16. 2025CULEMO: Cultural Lenses on Emotion -- Benchmarking LLMs for Cross-Cultural Emotion Understandingcited by 14
  17. 2025CulFiT: A Fine-grained Cultural-aware LLM Training Paradigm via Multilingual Critique Data Synthesiscited by 14
  18. 2025DRISHTIKON: A Multimodal Multilingual Benchmark for Testing Language Models' Understanding on Indian Culturecited by 13
  19. 2025Hire Your Anthropologist! Rethinking Culture Benchmarks Through an Anthropological Lenscited by 13
  20. 2025Cultural Bias Matters: A Cross-Cultural Benchmark Dataset and Sentiment-Enriched Model for Understanding Multimodal Metaphorscited by 10
  21. 2025Culture is Everywhere: A Call for Intentionally Cultural Evaluationcited by 10
  22. 2025Beyond Literal Token Overlap: Token Alignability for Multilingualitycited by 9
  23. 2024Beyond Metrics: Evaluating LLMs' Effectiveness in Culturally Nuanced, Low-Resource Real-World Scenarioscited by 7
  24. 2024Beyond Data Quantity: Key Factors Driving Performance in Multilingual Language Modelscited by 6
  25. 2025HESEIA: A community-based dataset for evaluating social biases in large language models, co-designed in real school settings in Latin Americacited by 6
  26. 2025Nunchi-Bench: Benchmarking Language Models on Cultural Reasoning with a Focus on Korean Superstitioncited by 6
  27. 2025A Culturally-diverse Multilingual Multimodal Video Benchmark & Modelcited by 5
  28. 2025LoraxBench: A Multitask, Multilingual Benchmark Suite for 20 Indonesian Languagescited by 5
  29. 2025Culturally-Aware Conversations: A Framework & Benchmark for LLMscited by 5
  30. 2025CaMMT: Benchmarking Culturally Aware Multimodal Machine Translationcited by 4
  31. 2025DaKultur: Evaluating the Cultural Awareness of Language Models for Danish with Native Speakerscited by 3
  32. 2025Culturally-Nuanced Story Generation for Reasoning in Low-Resource Languages: The Case of Javanese and Sundanesecited by 2
  33. 2025Scaling Cultural Resources for Improving Generative Modelscited by 2
  34. 2026SAFARI: A Community-Engaged Approach and Dataset of Stereotype Resources in the Sub-Saharan African Contextcited by 1

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