# The Translation Tax Is Not a Scalar: A Counterfactual Audit of English-Source Cue Inheritance in Chinese Multilingual Benchmarks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.07093 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07093/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 11 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [XNLI: Evaluating Cross-lingual Sentence Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05053/) (2018)
- [TyDi QA: A Benchmark for Information-Seeking Question Answering in Typologically Diverse Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05002/) (2020)
- [XCOPA: A Multilingual Dataset for Causal Commonsense Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00333/) (2020)
- [The Belebele Benchmark: a Parallel Reading Comprehension Dataset in 122 Language Variants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16884/) (2023)
- [State of What Art? A Call for Multi-Prompt LLM Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00595/) (2023)
- [ProSA: Assessing and Understanding the Prompt Sensitivity of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.12405/) (2024)
- [Translation Artifacts in Cross-lingual Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04721/) (2020)
- [INCLUDE: Evaluating Multilingual Language Understanding with Regional Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19799/) (2024)
- [The Bitter Lesson Learned from 2,000+ Multilingual Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15521/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Translation Tax is often treated as a scalar: translated benchmarks are assumed to inflate scores by preserving English-source cues. We audit this claim in an English-to-Chinese setting. Three proxy estimators disagree: back-translation gaps are small and parser-fragile; cue-score calibration does not predict item-level gains; and a six-model native-control comparison shows model-family rather than uniform benchmark effects. We add a same-item LLM-naturalization stress test that holds answer, options, and content fixed while rewriting Chinese surface form. After correcting a prompt-construction bug, this contrast no longer supports a model-family interaction, but it preserves a residue dose-response: high-residue items benefit while low-residue items do not. The result is not a single Translation Tax, but a set of estimator- and item-dependent validity risks. We release per-cell evidence, the naturalization protocol, human QC, and a reporting checklist for translated multilingual benchmark papers.