arXiv subjects

Nina Melero

Publications and source records attributed to Nina Melero.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Large Language Models and Book Summarization: Reading or Remembering, Which Is Better?

Summarization is a core task in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) and the introduction of large context windows reaching millions of tokens make it possible to process entire books in a single prompt. At the same time, for well-known books, LLMs can generate summaries based only on internal knowledge acquired during training. This raises several important questions: How do summaries generated from internal memory compare to those derived from the full text? Does prior knowledge influence summaries even when the model is given the book as input? In this work, we conduct an experimental evaluation of book summarization with state-of-the-art LLMs. We compare summaries of well-known books produced using (i) only the internal knowledge of the model and (ii) the full text of the book. The results show that having the full text provides more detailed summaries in general, but some books have better scores for the internal knowledge summaries. This puts into question the capabilities of models to perform summarization of long texts, as information learned during training can outperform summarization of the full text in some cases.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

It's the same but not the same: Do LLMs distinguish Spanish varieties?

In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated a high capacity for understanding and generating text in Spanish. However, with five hundred million native speakers, Spanish is not a homogeneous language but rather one rich in diatopic variations spanning both sides of the Atlantic. For this reason, in this study, we evaluate the ability of nine language models to identify and distinguish the morphosyntactic and lexical peculiarities of seven varieties of Spanish (Andean, Antillean, Continental Caribbean, Chilean, Peninsular, Mexican and Central American and Rioplatense) through a multiple-choice test. The results indicate that the Peninsular Spanish variety is the best identified by all models and that, among them, GPT-4o is the only model capable of recognizing the variability of the Spanish language. -- En los últimos años, los grandes modelos de lenguaje (LLMs, por sus siglas en inglés) han demostrado una alta capacidad para comprender y generar texto en español. Sin embargo, con quinientos millones de hablantes nativos, la española no es una lengua homogénea, sino rica en variedades diatópicas que se extienden a ambos lados del Atlántico. Por todo ello, evaluamos en este trabajo la capacidad de nueve modelos de lenguaje de identificar y discernir las peculiaridades morfosintácticas y léxicas de siete variedades de español (andino, antillano, caribeño continental, chileno, español peninsular, mexicano y centroamericano y rioplatense) mediante un test de respuesta múltiple. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la variedad de español peninsular es la mejor identificada por todos los modelos y que, de entre todos, GPT-4o es el único modelo capaz de identificar la variabilidad de la lengua española.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2024

Open Conversational LLMs do not know most Spanish words

The growing interest in Large Language Models (LLMs) and in particular in conversational models with which users can interact has led to the development of a large number of open-source chat LLMs. These models are evaluated on a wide range of benchmarks to assess their capabilities in answering questions or solving problems on almost any possible topic or to test their ability to reason or interpret texts. Instead, the evaluation of the knowledge that these models have of the languages has received much less attention. For example, the words that they can recognize and use in different languages. In this paper, we evaluate the knowledge that open-source chat LLMs have of Spanish words by testing a sample of words in a reference dictionary. The results show that open-source chat LLMs produce incorrect meanings for an important fraction of the words and are not able to use most of the words correctly to write sentences with context. These results show how Spanish is left behind in the open-source LLM race and highlight the need to push for linguistic fairness in conversational LLMs ensuring that they provide similar performance across languages.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2024

Evaluating Large Language Models with Tests of Spanish as a Foreign Language: Pass or Fail?

Large Language Models (LLMs) have been profusely evaluated on their ability to answer questions on many topics and their performance on different natural language understanding tasks. Those tests are usually conducted in English, but most LLM users are not native English speakers. Therefore, it is of interest to analyze how LLMs understand other languages at different levels: from paragraphs to morphems. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of state-of-the-art LLMs in TELEIA, a recently released benchmark with similar questions to those of Spanish exams for foreign students, covering topics such as reading comprehension, word formation, meaning and compositional semantics, and grammar. The results show that LLMs perform well at understanding Spanish but are still far from achieving the level of a native speaker in terms of grammatical competence.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2024

Spanish and LLM Benchmarks: is MMLU Lost in Translation?

The evaluation of Large Language Models (LLMs) is a key element in their continuous improvement process and many benchmarks have been developed to assess the performance of LLMs in different tasks and topics. As LLMs become adopted worldwide, evaluating them in languages other than English is increasingly important. However, most LLM benchmarks are simply translated using an automated tool and then run in the target language. This means that the results depend not only on the LLM performance in that language but also on the quality of the translation. In this paper, we consider the case of the well-known Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark. Selected categories of the benchmark are translated into Spanish using Azure Translator and ChatGPT4 and run on ChatGPT4. Next, the results are processed to identify the test items that produce different answers in Spanish and English. Those are then analyzed manually to understand if the automatic translation caused the change. The results show that a significant fraction of the failing items can be attributed to mistakes in the translation of the benchmark. These results make a strong case for improving benchmarks in languages other than English by at least revising the translations of the items and preferably by adapting the tests to the target language by experts.

cs.CL↗