Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models

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The field asks whether language models can understand evidence and reason reliably when questions, sources, and answers use different languages. Researchers test this with parallel and native-language benchmarks in mathematics, logic, multi-hop question answering, and culturally grounded tasks, while probing how script, language resources, and translation affect results. Common approaches include multilingual fine-tuning and reinforcement learning, translation and code-switching, cross-lingual distillation, and alignment of internal representations. Training can narrow language gaps, but English often remains advantageous, and gains can trade off with language fidelity, cultural grounding, or efficiency; no single reasoning language works best in every setting.

Latest papers

69 papers9 papers in the last four weeks, up 50% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

Scaling Multilingual Safety and Reasoning Evaluation through Reasoning-Guided Translation
Oct 14, 2026Zahraa Al Sahili, Ioannis Patras, Matthew PurverMultilingual Language Model Evaluation Language Model Safety Evaluation
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK · Department of Knowledge Technologies, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia
A Sovereign, Indic-First, Reasoning Model
Oct 11, 2026Sutanshu Saksena Raj, Prasanjith Pasunuti, Parijat Chatterjee +4Language Modeling Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
Bridge Routing Heads: Where Multilingual Multi-hop Reasoning Lives in LLMs
Oct 7, 2026Seunghan Kim, Minyeong Choe, Hyunil Kim +1Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models Multilingual Language Models
Chosun University · Soongsil University
Which Language Should a Skeleton Speak? Language Choices in Multilingual Reasoning
Oct 7, 2026HyeonSeok Lim, SeungWoo Song, Inho Won +3LLM Reasoning Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
ETRI · KAIST · Department of Artificial Intelligence, Dankook University
Rewrite What Matters: Adaptive Multilingual Query Rewriting for Reasoning via Agentic Reinforcement Learning
Oct 4, 2026Rui Qi, Yufeng Chen, Yunlong Liang +6Query Reformulation Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
Key Laboratory of Big Data & Artificial Intelligence in Transportation (Beijing Jiaotong University), Ministry of Education · School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University · Pattern Recognition Center, WeChat AI, Tencent Inc, China +1
Language-Conditioned Token and Reasoning Efficiency in Large Language Models: A Paired Cross-Lingual Study Protocol
Oct 3, 2026Genliang Zhu, Chu WangToken Efficiency Multilingual Language Model Evaluation
Accentrust, Vancouver, Canada · Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
Multilingual GSM-Symbolic: What determines capability transfer across languages?
Oct 2, 2026Kenneth Enevoldsen, Riley Herchert, Sofie Mosegaard +22Mathematical Reasoning Benchmarks Multilingual Language Model Evaluation
Aarhus University · Danish Foundation Models · University of Alabama +13
Investigating the Role of Reasoning-Language Alignment in Monolingual Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Oct 2, 2026Oliver Hauck, Mario Sanz-Guerrero, Katharina von der WenseCross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany
What Does Post-Training Change in Multilingual Reasoning?
Sep 29, 2026Hongyang Li, Xiao Li, Caesar Wu +2Multilingual Language Model Evaluation Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
University of Luxembourg · Seafill Open-Source Community
When Does Reasoning Help in Machine Translation? A Hierarchical Analysis of LRM Reasoning Traces
Sep 18, 2026Yuxiang Liu, Jiaming Luo, Eleftheria Briakou +1Machine Translation Large Reasoning Models
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign · Google DeepMind
Building Multilingual Bridges: Data Mixing as the Pillar of Generalization for In-Language Reasoning
Sep 9, 2026Mehrnaz Mofakhami, Ananya Sahu, Alejandro R. Salamanca +5Multilingual Language Models Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
Cohere Labs · Cohere
We're Cooked! - Probing LLM Political Alignment Via Conflict-Framed Recipe Translation
Sep 7, 2026Svetlana Gorovaia, Angelica Henestrosa, Ivan P. YamshchikovCross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models LLM Prompting
CAIRO, Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt Würzburg, Germany
CantoneseLLM v2: Reasoning in a Low-Resource Language
Sep 7, 2026Tsz Chung Cheng, Chung Shing Cheng, Chaak Ming Lau +1Low-Resource Language Processing Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
Kyushu University · hon9kon9ize · The Education University of Hong Kong +2
Choosing the Right Language Mode at Inference Time for Multilingual Reliability
Sep 4, 2026Ekata Mitra, Ameeta AgrawalCross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models LLM Reliability
PortNLP, Portland State University, USA
Enhancing Low-Resource Language Reasoning via High-Resource Language Feature Transfer
Aug 31, 2026Minju Song, Hyeon Hwang, Junhyun Lee +1Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models Low-Resource Language Processing
Korea University · Hankuk University of Foreign Studies · Noah’s Farm +1
Discovering Cross-Language Reasoning Invariance in LLMs with Geometry-Invariant Sparse Autoencoders
Aug 24, 2026Igor Bogdanov, Changcheng HuangCross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models Cross-Lingual Representation Alignment
Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
XHotpotQA: A Benchmark for Cross-Lingual Knowledge Composition in Multi-Hop Question Answering
Aug 23, 2026Iman Barati, Arash Ghafouri, Behrouz Minaei-BidgoliMulti-Hop QA Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
School of Computer Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran 16846-13114, Iran
LLMs Get Smarter from Targeted Synthetic Multilingual Data
Aug 16, 2026Ishika Agarwal, Arkajyoti Charaborty, Tanner Sorensen +2Multilingual Language Models Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
UIUC · Uniphore
Interpretable Cross-Lingual Alignment in Small Language Models: Probing Cultural and Pragmatic Reasoning in Japanese-English Bilingual LLMs
Aug 14, 2026Florian BraunPragmatic Reasoning in Language Models Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
Independent Researcher
GRPO Beyond English: A Large-Scale Study of GRPO in Non-English and Multilingual Settings
Aug 13, 2026Konstantin Dobler, Federico Scozzafava, Jonathan Janke +2Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models RL for Language Model Reasoning
Apple · 1Hasso Plattner Institute & ELLIS Unit Potsdam (work done during Apple internship)
Hidden Language Consistency Phenomena in Reasoning LLMs
Aug 9, 2026Muhammad Ali Shafique, Kelly MarchisioMultilingual Language Models Multilingual Language Model Evaluation
Kansas State University · Cohere
RP-OPSD: Reasoning-Pivot-Guided On-Policy Self-Distillation for Multilingual Reasoning Transfer
Aug 6, 2026Xinye Wang, Junxiao Liu, Shujian HuangNumerical Reasoning in Language Models Multilingual Language Models
National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University
On-Policy Delta Distillation for Multilingual Math Reasoning
Aug 6, 2026Byeongho Heo, Jaehui Hwang, Sangdoo Yun +1Numerical Reasoning in Language Models Multilingual Language Models
NAVER AI Lab
Native Multilingual Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Low-Resource Southeast Asian Languages
Aug 1, 2026Sean Gip Lim, William Chandra Tjhi, Hai Leong ChieuNumerical Reasoning in Language Models Multilingual Language Models
1Nanyang Technological University · 2AI Singapore · 3DSO National Laboratories
ADAGE: A Language-Agnostic Pipeline for Analogical Reasoning Evaluation
Jul 25, 2026Ahmed Haj Ahmed, Alvin GrissomMultilingual Language Model Evaluation Reasoning Evaluation
Haverford College
Similarity All The Way Up: Multilingual Generalization in LLMs Relies on Language-Level Similarity Structures
Jul 18, 2026Supantho Rakshit, Adele Goldberg, Henry ConklinMultilingual Language Model Evaluation Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Princeton University · Department of Psychology Princeton University · Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Princeton University
Cost of Reasoning in non-English Languages: A Case Study on Japanese
Jul 11, 2026Yuu JinnaiCross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models Multilingual Language Model Evaluation
CyberAgent / Tokyo, Japan
Efficient Multilingual Reasoning Transfer via Progressive Code-Switching
Jul 1, 2026Zhijun Wang, Junxiao Liu, Hao Zhou +3Code-Switching Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, China · Tongyi Lab, Alibaba Group
Multilingual Reasoning Cascades Need More Context
Jun 25, 2026Arnav Mazumder, Dengjia Zhang, Shuyue Stella Li +2Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models Context-Aware MT
University of Washington · Johns Hopkins University
Soft Token Alignment for Cross-Lingual Reasoning
Jun 25, 2026Jiayi He, Jungsoo Park, Wei Xu +1Multilingual Language Models Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models
Georgia Institute of Technology

Oct 14, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

Scaling Multilingual Safety and Reasoning Evaluation through Reasoning-Guided Translation

Zahraa Al Sahili, Ioannis Patras, Matthew Purver

School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK · Department of Knowledge Technologies, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Multilingual Language Model Evaluation Language Model Safety Evaluation LLM Safety Benchmarks Cross-Lingual Reasoning in Language Models

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Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed across languages, yet their safety and reasoning capabilities remain predominantly evaluated in English. Translating existing benchmarks offers a scalable approach to multilingual evaluation, but preserving task-specific meaning across languages presents significant challenges, particularly for harmful requests, mathematical reasoning, and conversational interactions. We introduce a reasoning-guided translation framework for constructing multilingual evaluations designed to preserve the structure and intended meaning of diverse benchmark tasks. Our approach separates translation strategy selection from large-scale generation, combining reasoning-guided configuration selection with task-aware validation, targeted repair, and independent quality screening. Using this framework, we develop a source-aligned evaluation collection spanning seven safety, conversational, and mathematical reasoning resources across 11 languages. The resulting collection achieves 99.94% coverage of intended item--language pairs in the two subsets requiring repair. Evaluations of open-source LLMs reveal distinct language-dependent vulnerabilities, including inconsistent refusal behaviour and substantial reasoning degradation in lower-resource languages. These findings highlight the importance of task-sensitive benchmark construction and systematic quality assessment for understanding multilingual model behaviour beyond English.