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Multilingual Fine-Tuning via Localized Gradient Conflict Resolution

About

The rapid evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) has established cross-lingual versatility as a defining feature of modern systems. However, fine-tuning these models frequently induces negative interference across languages. To address this, we reformulate multilingual fine-tuning as a multi-objective optimization (MOO) problem. Specifically, we introduce Bucket-Level MOO, a scalable distributed framework that applies gradient-based MOO algorithms locally on parameter buckets. This enables conflict-aware updates without the prohibitive communication overhead of reconstructing full gradient vectors. Theoretically, we prove this localized resolution natively enforces Refined Pareto Stationarity, a strictly tighter necessary condition for Pareto optimality. Empirically, Bucket-Level MOO mitigates interference by driving LLMs to construct distinct language-specific dimensions, improving representational separability. Extensive experiments across four base LLMs demonstrate that our method significantly improves both seen and unseen multilingual performance over standard fine-tuning paradigms.

Long P. Hoang, Yiran Zhao, Wei Lu, Wenxuan Zhang• 2026

Related benchmarks

TaskDatasetResultRank
General Multilingual CapabilityAggregate 8 Seen Languages
Average Score69.5
20
General Multilingual CapabilityAggregate 5 Unseen Languages
Average Score75.1
20
Knowledge-Based QAGlobal-MMLU-Lite 8 Seen Languages
MMLU Score65.2
20
Knowledge-Based QAGlobal-MMLU Lite 5 Unseen Languages
MMLU Score71.9
20
ReasoningPolyMath 8 Seen Languages
PolyMath Score50
20
ReasoningPolyMath 5 Unseen Languages
PolyMath Score51.3
20
Machine Reading ComprehensionBELEBELE 8 Seen Languages
BELE Score78.4
20
Machine Reading ComprehensionBELEBELE 5 Unseen Languages
BELE Score83.9
20
ReasoningMultilingual ARC-E 8 Seen Languages
ARC-E Accuracy85.4
20
ReasoningMultilingual ARC-E 5 Unseen Languages
ARC-E Accuracy94
20
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