@inproceedings{tasawong-etal-2026-sea-safeguardbench,
title = "{SEA}-{S}afeguard{B}ench: Culturally Grounded Safety Benchmark for {S}outheast {A}sian Languages",
author = "Tasawong, Panuthep and
Ngui, Jian Gang and
Aji, Alham Fikri and
Cohn, Trevor and
Limkonchotiwat, Peerat",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.194/",
pages = "3973--4003",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "Safeguard models help large language models (LLMs) detect and block harmful content, but most evaluations remain English-centric and overlook linguistic and cultural diversity. Existing multilingual safety benchmarks often rely on machine-translated English data, which fails to capture nuances in low-resource languages. Southeast Asian (SEA) languages are underrepresented despite the region{'}s linguistic diversity and unique safety concerns, from culturally sensitive political speech to region-specific misinformation. Addressing these gaps requires benchmarks that are natively authored to reflect local norms and harm scenarios. We introduce SEA-SafeguardBench, the first human-verified safety benchmark for SEA, covering eight languages, 21,640 samples, across three subsets: general, in-the-wild, and content generation. The experimental results from our benchmark demonstrate that even state-of-the-art LLMs and guardrails are challenged by SEA cultural and harm scenarios and underperform when compared to English texts."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="tasawong-etal-2026-sea-safeguardbench">
<titleInfo>
<title>SEA-SafeguardBench: Culturally Grounded Safety Benchmark for Southeast Asian Languages</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Panuthep</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Tasawong</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jian</namePart>
<namePart type="given">Gang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Ngui</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Alham</namePart>
<namePart type="given">Fikri</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Aji</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Trevor</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Cohn</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Peerat</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Limkonchotiwat</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-07</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Maria</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Liakata</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Viviane</namePart>
<namePart type="given">P</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Moreira</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiajun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">David</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Jurgens</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">San Diego, California, United States</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-395-1</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Safeguard models help large language models (LLMs) detect and block harmful content, but most evaluations remain English-centric and overlook linguistic and cultural diversity. Existing multilingual safety benchmarks often rely on machine-translated English data, which fails to capture nuances in low-resource languages. Southeast Asian (SEA) languages are underrepresented despite the region’s linguistic diversity and unique safety concerns, from culturally sensitive political speech to region-specific misinformation. Addressing these gaps requires benchmarks that are natively authored to reflect local norms and harm scenarios. We introduce SEA-SafeguardBench, the first human-verified safety benchmark for SEA, covering eight languages, 21,640 samples, across three subsets: general, in-the-wild, and content generation. The experimental results from our benchmark demonstrate that even state-of-the-art LLMs and guardrails are challenged by SEA cultural and harm scenarios and underperform when compared to English texts.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">tasawong-etal-2026-sea-safeguardbench</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.194/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-07</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>3973</start>
<end>4003</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T SEA-SafeguardBench: Culturally Grounded Safety Benchmark for Southeast Asian Languages
%A Tasawong, Panuthep
%A Ngui, Jian Gang
%A Aji, Alham Fikri
%A Cohn, Trevor
%A Limkonchotiwat, Peerat
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F tasawong-etal-2026-sea-safeguardbench
%X Safeguard models help large language models (LLMs) detect and block harmful content, but most evaluations remain English-centric and overlook linguistic and cultural diversity. Existing multilingual safety benchmarks often rely on machine-translated English data, which fails to capture nuances in low-resource languages. Southeast Asian (SEA) languages are underrepresented despite the region’s linguistic diversity and unique safety concerns, from culturally sensitive political speech to region-specific misinformation. Addressing these gaps requires benchmarks that are natively authored to reflect local norms and harm scenarios. We introduce SEA-SafeguardBench, the first human-verified safety benchmark for SEA, covering eight languages, 21,640 samples, across three subsets: general, in-the-wild, and content generation. The experimental results from our benchmark demonstrate that even state-of-the-art LLMs and guardrails are challenged by SEA cultural and harm scenarios and underperform when compared to English texts.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.194/
%P 3973-4003
Markdown (Informal)
[SEA-SafeguardBench: Culturally Grounded Safety Benchmark for Southeast Asian Languages](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.194/) (Tasawong et al., Findings 2026)
ACL