The Translation Tax Is Not a Scalar: A Counterfactual Audit of English-Source Cue Inheritance in Chinese Multilingual Benchmarks
The Translation Tax is often treated as a scalar: translated benchmarks are assumed to inflate scores by preserving English-source cues. We audit this claim in an English-to-Chinese setting. Three proxy estimators disagree: back-translation gaps are small and parser-fragile; cue-score calibration does not predict item-level gains; and a six-model native-control comparison shows model-family rather than uniform benchmark effects. We add a same-item LLM-naturalization stress test that holds answer, options, and content fixed while rewriting Chinese surface form. After correcting a prompt-construction bug, this contrast no longer supports a model-family interaction, but it preserves a residu...
| Authors | Zezheng Lin, Fengming Liu, Handi Li |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 8 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 8 May 2026 |
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