Can Embedding Similarity Predict Cross-Lingual Transfer? A Systematic Study on African Languages

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2601.03168v1
• Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2026 16:39:28 GMT
• Title: Can Embedding Similarity Predict Cross-Lingual Transfer? A Systematic Study on African Languages
• Abstract summary: Cross-lingual transfer is essential for building NLP systems for low-resource African languages.<n>We systematically evaluate five embedding similarity metrics across 816 transfer experiments.<n>We find that cosine gap and retrieval-based metrics reliably predict transfer success.
• Score: 12.074798555934855
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Cross-lingual transfer is essential for building NLP systems for low-resource African languages, but practitioners lack reliable methods for selecting source languages. We systematically evaluate five embedding similarity metrics across 816 transfer experiments spanning three NLP tasks, three African-centric multilingual models, and 12 languages from four language families. We find that cosine gap and retrieval-based metrics (P@1, CSLS) reliably predict transfer success ($ρ= 0.4-0.6$), while CKA shows negligible predictive power ($ρ\approx 0.1$). Critically, correlation signs reverse when pooling across models (Simpson's Paradox), so practitioners must validate per-model. Embedding metrics achieve comparable predictive power to URIEL linguistic typology. Our results provide concrete guidance for source language selection and highlight the importance of model-specific analysis.

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