Culture Matters in Toxic Language Detection in Persian

Zahra Bokaei; Walid Magdy; Bonnie Webber

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arXiv · 2506.03458

Culture Matters in Toxic Language Detection in Persian

Zahra Bokaei·Walid Magdy·Bonnie Webber

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Abstract

Toxic language detection is crucial for creating safer online environments and limiting the spread of harmful content. While toxic language detection has been under-explored in Persian, the current work compares different methods for this task, including fine-tuning, data enrichment, zero-shot and few-shot learning, and cross-lingual transfer learning. What is especially compelling is the impact of cultural context on transfer learning for this task: We show that the language of a country with cultural similarities to Persian yields better results in transfer learning. Conversely, the improvement is lower when the language comes from a culturally distinct country. Warning: This paper contains examples of toxic language that may disturb some readers. These examples are included for the purpose of research on toxic detection.

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Zahra Bokaei, Walid Magdy, Bonnie Webber. 2025-06-03. Culture Matters in Toxic Language Detection in Persian. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03458

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