enismaxim1
commented
5 months ago Having conducted research in a closely-related topic, I think that this approach is unlikely to work.
A useful mental model for how LLMs operate on different languages is the following: they first convert text (in any particular language) into a shared vector space representing meaning. Crucially, this vector space is language-agnostic: the LLM will convert a Russian text and an English text of equal meaning into a nearly-equal part of the vector space. The conversion from language into meaning is just translation, and the LLM will be lossy on this conversion on precisely the languages in which it is less effective at translating.
But the point is that the LLMs ability to effectively process low-resource language text is limited by its underlying translation ability. If we generate synthetic data, then we are limited by exactly the same thing, meaning that we are unlikely to be able to extract extra signal from synthetic data with this approach.
A related way to generate sytnethic data in a way that does work is to use LLMs, which are better at translating particular documents than existing translation systems, in order to train the smaller translation systems to match the translation performance of LLMs. If you're interested, see the issue #9 (or the paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.13813).
siddhantx0
random-yang
universea
Background In the field of multilingual large models, especially for non-English corpora, there is often a problem of insufficient data quantity and poor quality. High-quality training data is crucial for model performance, particularly for under-resourced minority languages where a lack of sufficient training data is often a major limiting factor. Therefore, could translating an English corpus into various minority languages to create high-quality synthetic data corpora be a potential solution?
Proposal The following steps might help generate and utilize synthetic datasets to enhance the capabilities of large multilingual models, especially for minority languages:
Selection and Optimization of Translation Models: Use the agent translation project or other efficient translation models as the translation tool to ensure high-quality output.
Generation of Synthetic Datasets: Utilize the aforementioned translation model to process English data, generating synthetic datasets in various target languages. Clean and validate the generated data to ensure its quality.
Training and Fine-Tuning of Multilingual Large Language Models: Use the synthetic datasets to train or fine-tune multilingual large models, observing improvements in the models' ability to process multilingual texts.
Evaluation and Iteration: Assess the model performance through standardized tests and real-world scenario testing, with a particular focus on the performance in minority languages, and iterate on the model and data generation processes based on feedback.
Discussion This approach could greatly promote the generation of data and training of models for minority languages, as well as improve the overall performance and application breadth of multilingual models. I am eager to discuss the feasibility of this plan, particularly regarding the technical implementation and resource requirements. If you are interested in this topic or have relevant experience, please join the discussion and explore this field together.