@inproceedings{ng-etal-2025-sea,
title = "{SEA}-{LION}: {S}outheast {A}sian Languages in One Network",
author = "Ng, Raymond and
Nguyen, Thanh Ngan and
Yuli, Huang and
Chia, Tai Ngee and
Yi, Leong Wai and
Leong, Wei Qi and
Yong, Xianbin and
Ngui, Jian Gang and
Susanto, Yosephine and
Cheng, Nicholas and
Rengarajan, Hamsawardhini and
Limkonchotiwat, Peerat and
Hulagadri, Adithya Venkatadri and
Teng, Kok Wai and
Tong, Yeo Yeow and
Siow, Bryan and
Teo, Wei Yi and
Meng, Tan Choon and
Ong, Brandon and
Ong, Zhi Hao and
Montalan, Jann Railey and
Chan, Adwin and
Antonyrex, Sajeban and
Lee, Ren and
Choa, Esther and
Tat-Wee, David Ong and
Liu, Bing Jie Darius and
Tjhi, William Chandra and
Cambria, Erik and
Teo, Leslie",
editor = "Inui, Kentaro and
Sakti, Sakriani and
Wang, Haofen and
Wong, Derek F. and
Bhattacharyya, Pushpak and
Banerjee, Biplab and
Ekbal, Asif and
Chakraborty, Tanmoy and
Singh, Dhirendra Pratap",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing and the 4th Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics",
month = dec,
year = "2025",
address = "Mumbai, India",
publisher = "The Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing and The Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.ijcnlp-long.30/",
pages = "512--526",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-298-5",
abstract = "Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have dominated much of the artificial intelligence scene with their ability to process and generate natural languages. However, the majority of LLM research and development remains English-centric, leaving low-resource languages such as those in the Southeast Asian (SEA) region under-represented. To address this representation gap, we introduce Llama-SEA-LION-v3-8B-IT and Gemma-SEA-LION-v3-9B-IT, two cutting-edge multilingual LLMs designed for SEA languages. The SEA-LION family of LLMs supports 11 SEA languages, namely English, Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Malay, Thai, Burmese, Lao, Filipino, Tamil, and Khmer. Our work leverages large-scale multilingual continued pre-training with a comprehensive post-training regime involving multiple stages of instruction fine-tuning, alignment, and model merging. Evaluation results on multilingual benchmarks indicate that our models achieve state-of-the-art performance across LLMs supporting SEA languages. We open-source the models to benefit the wider SEA community."
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<abstract>Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have dominated much of the artificial intelligence scene with their ability to process and generate natural languages. However, the majority of LLM research and development remains English-centric, leaving low-resource languages such as those in the Southeast Asian (SEA) region under-represented. To address this representation gap, we introduce Llama-SEA-LION-v3-8B-IT and Gemma-SEA-LION-v3-9B-IT, two cutting-edge multilingual LLMs designed for SEA languages. The SEA-LION family of LLMs supports 11 SEA languages, namely English, Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Malay, Thai, Burmese, Lao, Filipino, Tamil, and Khmer. Our work leverages large-scale multilingual continued pre-training with a comprehensive post-training regime involving multiple stages of instruction fine-tuning, alignment, and model merging. Evaluation results on multilingual benchmarks indicate that our models achieve state-of-the-art performance across LLMs supporting SEA languages. We open-source the models to benefit the wider SEA community.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T SEA-LION: Southeast Asian Languages in One Network
%A Ng, Raymond
%A Nguyen, Thanh Ngan
%A Yuli, Huang
%A Chia, Tai Ngee
%A Yi, Leong Wai
%A Leong, Wei Qi
%A Yong, Xianbin
%A Ngui, Jian Gang
%A Susanto, Yosephine
%A Cheng, Nicholas
%A Rengarajan, Hamsawardhini
%A Limkonchotiwat, Peerat
%A Hulagadri, Adithya Venkatadri
%A Teng, Kok Wai
%A Tong, Yeo Yeow
%A Siow, Bryan
%A Teo, Wei Yi
%A Meng, Tan Choon
%A Ong, Brandon
%A Ong, Zhi Hao
%A Montalan, Jann Railey
%A Chan, Adwin
%A Antonyrex, Sajeban
%A Lee, Ren
%A Choa, Esther
%A Tat-Wee, David Ong
%A Liu, Bing Jie Darius
%A Tjhi, William Chandra
%A Cambria, Erik
%A Teo, Leslie
%Y Inui, Kentaro
%Y Sakti, Sakriani
%Y Wang, Haofen
%Y Wong, Derek F.
%Y Bhattacharyya, Pushpak
%Y Banerjee, Biplab
%Y Ekbal, Asif
%Y Chakraborty, Tanmoy
%Y Singh, Dhirendra Pratap
%S Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing and the 4th Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics
%D 2025
%8 December
%I The Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing and The Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Mumbai, India
%@ 979-8-89176-298-5
%F ng-etal-2025-sea
%X Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have dominated much of the artificial intelligence scene with their ability to process and generate natural languages. However, the majority of LLM research and development remains English-centric, leaving low-resource languages such as those in the Southeast Asian (SEA) region under-represented. To address this representation gap, we introduce Llama-SEA-LION-v3-8B-IT and Gemma-SEA-LION-v3-9B-IT, two cutting-edge multilingual LLMs designed for SEA languages. The SEA-LION family of LLMs supports 11 SEA languages, namely English, Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Malay, Thai, Burmese, Lao, Filipino, Tamil, and Khmer. Our work leverages large-scale multilingual continued pre-training with a comprehensive post-training regime involving multiple stages of instruction fine-tuning, alignment, and model merging. Evaluation results on multilingual benchmarks indicate that our models achieve state-of-the-art performance across LLMs supporting SEA languages. We open-source the models to benefit the wider SEA community.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.ijcnlp-long.30/
%P 512-526
Markdown (Informal)
[SEA-LION: Southeast Asian Languages in One Network](https://aclanthology.org/2025.ijcnlp-long.30/) (Ng et al., IJCNLP-AACL 2025)
ACL
- Raymond Ng, Thanh Ngan Nguyen, Huang Yuli, Tai Ngee Chia, Leong Wai Yi, Wei Qi Leong, Xianbin Yong, Jian Gang Ngui, Yosephine Susanto, Nicholas Cheng, Hamsawardhini Rengarajan, Peerat Limkonchotiwat, Adithya Venkatadri Hulagadri, Kok Wai Teng, Yeo Yeow Tong, Bryan Siow, Wei Yi Teo, Tan Choon Meng, Brandon Ong, Zhi Hao Ong, Jann Railey Montalan, Adwin Chan, Sajeban Antonyrex, Ren Lee, Esther Choa, David Ong Tat-Wee, Bing Jie Darius Liu, William Chandra Tjhi, Erik Cambria, and Leslie Teo. 2025. SEA-LION: Southeast Asian Languages in One Network. In Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing and the 4th Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 512–526, Mumbai, India. The Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing and The Association for Computational Linguistics.