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arXiv · 2602.16957

When Semantic Overlap Is Not Enough: Cross-Lingual Euphemism Transfer Between Turkish and English

Hasan Can Biyik·Libby Barak·Jing Peng·Anna Feldman
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Abstract

Euphemisms substitute socially sensitive expressions, often softening or reframing meaning, and their reliance on cultural and pragmatic context complicates modeling across languages. In this study, we investigate how cross-lingual equivalence influences transfer in multilingual euphemism detection. We categorize Potentially Euphemistic Terms (PETs) in Turkish and English into Overlapping (OPETs) and Non-Overlapping (NOPETs) subsets based on their functional, pragmatic, and semantic alignment. Our findings reveal a transfer asymmetry: semantic overlap is insufficient to guarantee positive transfer, particularly in low-resource Turkish-to-English direction, where performance can degrade even for overlapping euphemisms, and in some cases, improve under NOPET-based training. Differences in label distribution help explain these counterintuitive results. Category-level analysis suggests that transfer may be influenced by domain-specific alignment, though evidence is limited by sparsity.

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Hasan Can Biyik, Libby Barak, Jing Peng, Anna Feldman. 2026-02-18. When Semantic Overlap Is Not Enough: Cross-Lingual Euphemism Transfer Between Turkish and English. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16957

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