arXiv subjects

Andrei-Alexandru Manea

Publications and source records attributed to Andrei-Alexandru Manea.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Multilingual Vision-Language Models, A Survey

This survey examines multilingual vision-language models that process text and images across languages. We review 33 models and 23 benchmarks, spanning encoder-only and generative architectures, and identify a key tension between language neutrality (consistent cross-lingual representations) and cultural awareness (adaptation to cultural contexts). Current training methods favor neutrality through contrastive learning, while cultural awareness depends on diverse data. Two-thirds of evaluation benchmarks use translation-based approaches prioritizing semantic consistency, though recent work incorporates culturally grounded content. We find discrepancies in cross-lingual capabilities and gaps between training objectives and evaluation goals.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

Investigating the Effect of Parallel Data in the Cross-Lingual Transfer for Vision-Language Encoders

Most pre-trained Vision-Language (VL) models and training data for the downstream tasks are only available in English. Therefore, multilingual VL tasks are solved using cross-lingual transfer: fine-tune a multilingual pre-trained model or transfer the text encoder using parallel data. We study the alternative approach: transferring an already trained encoder using parallel data. We investigate the effect of parallel data: domain and the number of languages, which were out of focus in previous work. Our results show that even machine-translated task data are the best on average, caption-like authentic parallel data outperformed it in some languages. Further, we show that most languages benefit from multilingual training.

cs.CL↗