Low-Resource MT

MT: Machine Translation

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Overview

The field studies how to translate languages that lack the large parallel-text collections and language technologies available for widely used languages, helping broaden access to information and services. Common approaches include building curated corpora, adapting multilingual models such as NLLB and mT5, transferring knowledge from related languages, and creating synthetic training data through back-translation or language-model generation. Researchers also explore retrieval-based prompting, linguistic resources such as dictionaries and grammars, and reinforcement learning with semantic or quality-estimation rewards. Progress remains uneven: results depend heavily on data quality, language variety, script and tokenization, while metric reliability, data contamination, and the gap between automatic scores and human judgment remain open concerns.

Latest papers

CardsList

87 papers15 papers in the last four weeks, up 67% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Nsanku: Evaluating Zero-Shot Translation Performance of LLMs for Ghanaian Languages

    May 5, 2026Stephen E. Moore, Mich-Seth Owusu, Akwasi Asare +13Low-Resource Language ProcessingOpen-Weight Language Models

    Department of Mathematics, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana · Ghana Natural Language Processing, Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana · Khaya AI LTD Ghana

  2. Translating Under Pressure: Domain-Aware LLMs for Crisis Communication

    Apr 29, 2026Antonio Castaldo, Maria Carmen Staiano, Johanna Monti +2Domain AdaptationDisaster Response

    University of Pisa · University of Naples “L’Orientale” · University of Macerata +1

  3. Syntax as a Rosetta Stone: Universal Dependencies for In-Context Coptic Translation

    Apr 20, 2026Abhishek Purushothama, Emma Thronson, Alexia Guo +1In-Context LearningLow-Resource MT

    Corpling Lab Georgetown University

  4. MERIT: Multilingual Expert-Reward Informed Tuning for Chinese-Centric Low-Resource Machine Translation

    Apr 6, 2026Zhixiang Lu, Chong Zhang, Chenyu Xue +4Machine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

  5. An Empirical Study of Many-Shot In-Context Learning for Machine Translation of Low-Resource Languages

    Apr 3, 2026Yinhan Lu, Gaganpreet Jhajj, Chen Zhang +2In-Context LearningLow-Resource MT

    Mila – Quebec AI Institute · McGill University · Athabasca University +2

  6. Towards High-Quality Machine Translation for Kokborok: A Low-Resource Tibeto-Burman Language of Northeast India

    Mar 28, 2026Badal Nyalang, Biman DebbarmaMachine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    MWire Labs Shillong, Meghalaya, India · Department of Kokborok, Tripura University Agartala, Tripura, India

  7. Translation Asymmetry in LLMs as a Data Augmentation Factor: A Case Study for 6 Romansh Language Varieties

    Mar 26, 2026Jannis Vamvas, Ignacio Pérez Prat, Angela Heldstab +3Machine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    University of Zurich · Lia Rumantscha

  8. Translation or Recitation? Calibrating Evaluation Scores for Machine Translation of Extremely Low-Resource Languages

    Mar 26, 2026Danlu Chen, Ka Sing He, Jiahe Tian +4Low-Resource MTMT Evaluation

    UC San Diego · New York University · Durham University +3

  9. Samasāmayik: A Parallel Dataset for Hindi-Sanskrit Machine Translation

    Mar 25, 2026N J Karthika, Keerthana Suryanarayanan, Jahanvi Purohit +3Machine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    Indian Institute of Technology Bombay · Geakminds Technologies Private Limited · Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

  10. Multi-Method Validation of Large Language Model Medical Translation Across High- and Low-Resource Languages

    Mar 23, 2026Chukwuebuka Anyaegbuna, Eduardo Juan Perez Guerrero, Jerry Liu +6Machine TranslationMultilingual Language Model Evaluation

  11. SAGE: Sustainable Agent-Guided Expert-tuning for Culturally Attuned Translation in Low-Resource Southeast Asia

    Mar 20, 2026Zhixiang Lu, Chong Zhang, Yulong Li +5Machine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Suzhou, China · University of Liverpool Liverpool, United Kingdom · Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

  12. VEPO: Variable Entropy Policy Optimization for Low-Resource Language Foundation Models

    Mar 19, 2026Chonghan Liu, Yimin Du, Qi An +8RL for Language ModelsLow-Resource MT

    1Qiyuan Tech.

  13. Can Linguistically Related Languages Guide LLM Translation in Low-Resource Settings?

    Mar 17, 2026Aishwarya Ramasethu, Niyathi Allu, Rohin Garg +2Machine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    Prediction Guard · Independent · Scale AI +1

  14. Omnilingual MT: Machine Translation for 1,600 Languages

    Mar 17, 2026Omnilingual MT Team, Belen Alastruey, Niyati Bafna +29Machine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    FAIR at Meta

  15. Developing an English-Efik Corpus and Machine Translation System for Digitization Inclusion

    Mar 16, 2026Offiong Bassey Edet, Mbuotidem Sunday Awak, Emmanuel Oyo-Ita +2Machine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    University of Cross River State · ML Collective · Arthur Jarvis University +1

  16. NepTam: A Nepali-Tamang Parallel Corpus and Baseline Machine Translation Experiments

    Mar 14, 2026Rupak Raj Ghimire, Bipesh Subedi, Balaram Prasain +7Low-Resource MTMachine Translation

    ILPRL, Kathmandu University, Nepal · Tribhuvan University, Nepal · Dublin City University, Ireland

  17. GhanaNLP Parallel Corpora: Comprehensive Multilingual Resources for Low-Resource Ghanaian Languages

    Mar 14, 2026Lawrence Adu Gyamfi, Paul Azunre, Stephen Edward Moore +4African Language ProcessingLow-Resource Language Processing

    Ghana Natural Language Processing, Ghana · Khaya AI LTD, Ghana · Department of Mathematics, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

  18. Mending the Holes: Mitigating Reward Hacking in Reinforcement Learning for Multilingual Translation

    Mar 13, 2026Yifeng Liu, Siqi Ouyang, Yatish Hosmane Revanasiddappa +1Low-Resource MTMultilingual Language Models

    Carnegie Mellon University

  19. Just Use XML: Revisiting Joint Translation and Label Projection

    Mar 12, 2026Thennal DK, Chris Biemann, Hans Ole HatzelCross-Lingual TransferLow-Resource MT

    Language Technology Group, University of Hamburg

  20. ViDia2Std: A Parallel Corpus and Methods for Low-Resource Vietnamese Dialect-to-Standard Translation

    Mar 10, 2026Khoa Anh Ta, Nguyen Van Dinh, Kiet Van NguyenLow-Resource MTLow-Resource Language Processing

    Faculty of Information Science and Engineering, University of Information Technology, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

  21. Konkani LLM: Multi-Script Instruction Tuning and Evaluation for a Low-Resource Indian Language

    Mar 7, 2026Reuben Chagas Fernandes, Gaurang S. PatkarLow-Resource Language ProcessingLLM Fine-Tuning

    Don Bosco College Of Engineering, Fatorda

  22. Evaluating LLM-Based Translation of a Low-Resource Technical Language: The Medical and Philosophical Greek of Galen

    Feb 27, 2026James L. Zainaldin, Cameron Pattison, Manuela Marai +2Machine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    Department of Classical and Mediterranean Studies, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA · Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, Washington, DC 20008, USA · Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA +3

  23. Mitigating Structural Noise in Low-Resource S2TT: An Optimized Cascaded Nepali-English Pipeline with Punctuation Restoration

    Feb 25, 2026Tangsang Chongbang, Pranesh Pyara Shrestha, Amrit Sarki +1Speech TranslationLow-Resource MT

    Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Institute of Engineering, Pulchowk Campus, Lalitpur, Bagmati, Nepal

  24. Evaluating Extremely Low-Resource Machine Translation: A Comparative Study of ChrF++ and BLEU Metrics

    Feb 19, 2026Sanjeev Kumar, Preethi Jyothi, Pushpak BhattacharyyaMT EvaluationMachine Translation

    Dept. of CSE, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India

  25. LuxMT Technical Report

    Feb 17, 2026Nils RehlingerMachine TranslationLow-Resource MT

    University of Luxembourg / Esch-Belval, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

  26. Crowdsourcing Piedmontese to Test LLMs on Non-Standard Orthography

    Feb 16, 2026Gianluca Vico, Jindřich LibovickýTokenization in Language ModelsLow-Resource Language Processing

    Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics, Malostranské náměstí 25, 118 00 Praha, Czech Republic

  27. Is MT Ready for the Next Crisis or Pandemic?

    Jan 15, 2026Vipasha Bansal, William D. Lewis, Nicole Mihaylova +2Machine TranslationMT Evaluation

    University of Washington