MLAIRE: Multilingual Language-Aware Information Retrieval Evaluation Protocal

Hugging Face Daily Papers Papers

Summary

MLAIRE is a multilingual language-aware information retrieval evaluation protocol that separates semantic retrieval accuracy from query-language preference to better assess retrieval utility across mixed-language corpora.

Multilingual Information Retrieval is increasingly important in real-world search settings, where users issue queries over mixed-language corpora. Existing evaluations mainly reward language-agnostic semantic relevance, treating relevant passages equally regardless of language. Yet retrieval utility also depends on the language of the retrieved passages: users may prefer results they can read and verify in the query language, and query--passage language mismatch can complicate downstream grounding and answer verification in Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems. To evaluate this language-aware dimension, we introduce MLAIRE, a Multilingual Language-Aware Information Retrieval Evaluation protocol that disentangles cross-lingual semantic retrieval from query-language preference. MLAIRE constructs controlled pools with parallel passages across languages, enabling measurement of semantic retrieval accuracy and query-language preference when equivalent translations are available. We propose language-aware metrics, including Language Preference Rate (LPR) and Lang-nDCG, together with a 4-way decomposition separating semantic and query-language preference failures. Evaluating 31 dense, sparse, and late-interaction retrievers, we show that standard metrics obscure distinct behaviors: semantically strong retrievers may return correct content in a non-query language, while retrievers with stronger query-language preference may retrieve less semantically relevant passages.
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Source: https://huggingface.co/papers/2605.07249

Abstract

Multilingual information retrieval evaluation protocol MLAIRE separates semantic retrieval accuracy from query-language preference to better assess retrieval utility across mixed-language corpora.

Multilingual Information Retrievalis increasingly important in real-world search settings, where users issue queries over mixed-language corpora. Existing evaluations mainly reward language-agnostic semantic relevance, treating relevant passages equally regardless of language. Yet retrieval utility also depends on the language of the retrieved passages: users may prefer results they can read and verify in the query language, and query--passage language mismatch can complicate downstream grounding and answer verification inRetrieval-Augmented Generationsystems. To evaluate this language-aware dimension, we introduce MLAIRE, a Multilingual Language-Aware Information Retrieval Evaluation protocol that disentanglescross-lingual semantic retrievalfromquery-language preference. MLAIRE constructs controlled pools with parallel passages across languages, enabling measurement of semantic retrieval accuracy andquery-language preferencewhen equivalent translations are available. We proposelanguage-aware metrics, includingLanguage Preference Rate(LPR) andLang-nDCG, together with a 4-way decomposition separating semantic andquery-language preferencefailures. Evaluating 31 dense, sparse, andlate-interaction retrievers, we show that standard metrics obscure distinct behaviors: semantically strong retrievers may return correct content in a non-query language, while retrievers with strongerquery-language preferencemay retrieve less semantically relevant passages.

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