Papers › Non-Parametric Online Learning from Human Feedback for Neural Machine Translation

Non-Parametric Online Learning from Human Feedback for Neural Machine Translation

23 Sep 2021arXiv:2109.11136archive 2025-07-28

Dongqi Wang, Haoran Wei, Zhirui Zhang, ShuJian Huang, Jun Xie, Jiajun Chen

We study the problem of online learning with human feedback in the human-in-the-loop machine translation, in which the human translators revise the machine-generated translations and then the corrected translations are used to improve the neural machine translation (NMT) system. However, previous methods require online model updating or additional translation memory networks to achieve high-quality performance, making them inflexible and inefficient in practice. In this paper, we propose a novel non-parametric online learning method without changing the model structure. This approach introduces two k-nearest-neighbor (knn) modules: one module memorizes the human feedback, which is the correct sentences provided by human translators, while the other balances the usage of the history human feedback and original NMT models adaptively. Experiments conducted on EMEA and JRC-Acquis benchmarks demonstrate that our proposed method obtains substantial improvements on translation accuracy and achieves better adaptation performance with less repeating human correction operations.

PaperPDFCodeCode Syntology ran

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="2109.11136")

Code

Syntology Ran 5 of 8 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 3 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 1 ran · our draft was wrong; 4 ran with no contract checked.

By repository: official repository: 7 samples from 1 repository, 4 ran; 1 identical to code first harvested elsewhere. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.

wangqi1996/kok officialmentioned in paperpytorchMIT report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

8 samples harvested; 5 ran; 0 honoured the contract we drafted; 3 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.

1ran · our draft was wrong
4ran
3unverified

Licence: 8 of the 8 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.

Harvested from wangqi1996/kok. Some samples are identical code Syntology first harvested from another repository; for those, this paper's copy is not located and its licence is not recorded. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.

Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.

Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: 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. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.

distributed_init wangqi1996/kok/fairseq/distributed_utils.py official repository ran MIT recorded; this copy not marked cleared · pointer only · 2e69129bbcf930e7 · report
is_master wangqi1996/kok/fairseq/distributed_utils.py official repository ran MIT recorded; this copy not marked cleared · pointer only · 90b79fe15491de83 · report
safe_readline wangqi1996/kok/fairseq/binarizer.py official repository ran MIT recorded; this copy not marked cleared · pointer only · 82bdf940665aeeb4 · report
url_to_filename wangqi1996/kok/fairseq/file_utils.py official repository ran fingerprinted MIT recorded; this copy not marked cleared · pointer only · 9418b43048e4e4ec · report
all_reduce wangqi1996/kok/fairseq/distributed_utils.py official repository unverified MIT recorded; this copy not marked cleared · pointer only · 199e96db5edd0edd · report
filename_to_url wangqi1996/kok/fairseq/file_utils.py official repository unverified MIT recorded; this copy not marked cleared · pointer only · aafdc12f01ab388f · report
load_archive_file wangqi1996/kok/fairseq/file_utils.py official repository unverified MIT recorded; this copy not marked cleared · pointer only · bf870e076be41d5d · report
get_symbols_to_strip_from_output identical code first harvested elsewhere ran · our draft was wrong licence of this copy not recorded · 88ce019380f10478 · report

Tasks

Machine TranslationNMTTranslation

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Methods

EMEA

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections