{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/nilechat-towards-linguistically-diverse-and","title":"NileChat: Towards Linguistically Diverse and Culturally Aware LLMs for Local Communities","arxiv_id":"2505.18383","date":"2025-05-23","proceeding":null,"authors":["Abdellah El Mekki","Houdaifa Atou","Omer Nacar","Shady Shehata","Muhammad Abdul-Mageed"],"abstract":"Enhancing the linguistic capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) to include low-resource languages is a critical research area. Current research directions predominantly rely on synthetic data generated by translating English corpora, which, while demonstrating promising linguistic understanding and translation abilities, often results in models aligned with source language culture. These models frequently fail to represent the cultural heritage and values of local communities. This work proposes a methodology to create both synthetic and retrieval-based pre-training data tailored to a specific community, considering its (i) language, (ii) cultural heritage, and (iii) cultural values. We demonstrate our methodology using Egyptian and Moroccan dialects as testbeds, chosen for their linguistic and cultural richness and current underrepresentation in LLMs. As a proof-of-concept, we develop NileChat, a 3B parameter LLM adapted for Egyptian and Moroccan communities, incorporating their language, cultural heritage, and values. Our results on various understanding, translation, and cultural and values alignment benchmarks show that NileChat outperforms existing Arabic-aware LLMs of similar size and performs on par with larger models. We share our methods, data, and models with the community to promote the inclusion and coverage of more diverse communities in LLM development.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18383v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.18383v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"nilechat-towards-linguistically-diverse-and","repo_url":"https://github.com/ubc-nlp/nilechat","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"translation","task_name":"Translation"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/2505.18383","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2505.18383","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2505.18383"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-25T09:33:49+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"deterministic:regex_extraction","url":"https://github.com/EleutherAI/lm-evaluation-harness","reach":null}],"summary":{"unverified":1},"by_repo_kind":{"found_in_text":{"samples":1,"ran":0,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"ef805b4a2d56d37a","entry":"doc_to_text","repo":"EleutherAI/lm-evaluation-harness","repo_kind":"found_in_text","path":"lm_eval/tasks/arab_culture_completion/utils_completion.py","file_url":"https://github.com/EleutherAI/lm-evaluation-harness/blob/HEAD/lm_eval/tasks/arab_culture_completion/utils_completion.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"ef805b4a2d56d37a"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}