Bilingual Lexicon Quality in Code-Switched Training for Zero-Shot Cross-Lingual Retrieval on MIRACL

Abstract

Abstract: Transferring information retrieval (IR) models from a high-resource language (typically English) to other languages in a zero-shot fashion has become a widely adopted approach. In this work, we show that the effectiveness of zero-shot rankers diminishes when queries and documents are present in different languages. Motivated by this, we propose to train ranking models on artificially code-switched data instead, which we generate by utilizing bilingual lexicons. To this end, we experiment with lexicons induced from (1) cross-lingual word embeddings and (2) parallel Wikipedia page titles. We use

Research Question

What is the impact of bilingual lexicon quality on the effectiveness of code-switched training for zero-shot cross-lingual retrieval models evaluated on MIRACL?

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This record has not completed Gate 2 of the verification pipeline (a type-checked Lean4 proof for mathematical claims, or a sealed-sandbox reproduction for empirical claims). It is a literature synthesis only. VERIFIED requires an attached reproducible artifact (Lean4 proof source, or repro script and results) before this status can be set; it is not derived from review score or claim count.

Quality Tier

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Quality Dimensions

Automated triage signals derived from public fields; not human peer review or independent validation.

Correction Record

Public corrections are additive records. Current status does not claim the synthesis is error-free.

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