Global Security Blind Spots: Translation as a Safety Bypass in Low-Resource Languages
Large language models are deployed globally, yet safety alignment and evaluation remain concentrated in English: harmful requests refused in English can elicit unsafe completions when translated into low-resource languages. We evaluate ten widely deployed LLMs across 79 languages (English plus 78 low-resource) under a translation-bypass threat model, using a metric conditioned on English safety, which separates translation bypass from unsafety already present in English. English safety does not transfer reliably: conditioned on safe English completions, mean bypass rates range from 21.9% to 44.4%. Bypass risk concentrates in a subset of language families, a pattern broadly shared across m...
| Authors | Jalil Alva, David Harper, Abigail E. Thornton et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 19 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 19 October 2026 |
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