@inproceedings{biyik-etal-2026-semantic,
title = "When Semantic Overlap Is Not Enough: Cross-Lingual Euphemism Transfer Between {T}urkish and {E}nglish",
author = "Biyik, Hasan Can and
Barak, Libby and
Peng, Jing and
Feldman, Anna",
editor = {Oflazer, Kemal and
K{\"o}ksal, Abdullatif and
Varol, Onur},
booktitle = "Proceedings of the Second Workshop Natural Language Processing for {T}urkic Languages ({SIGTURK} 2026)",
month = mar,
year = "2026",
address = "Rabat, Morocco",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.sigturk-1.11/",
pages = "113--125",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-370-8",
abstract = "Euphemisms substitute socially sensitive expressions, often softening or reframing meaning, and their reliance on cultural and pragmatic context complicates modeling across languages. In this study, we investigate how cross-lingual equivalence influences transfer in multilingual euphemism detection. We categorize Potentially Euphemistic Terms (PETs) in Turkish and English into Overlapping (OPETs) and Non-Overlapping (NOPETs) subsets based on their functional, pragmatic, and semantic alignment. Our findings reveal a transfer asymmetry: semantic overlap is insufficient to guarantee positive transfer, particularly in low-resource Turkish-to-English direction, where performance can degrade even for overlapping euphemisms, and in some cases, improve under NOPET-based training. Differences in label distribution help explain these counterintuitive results. Category-level analysis suggests that transfer may be influenced by domain-specific alignment, though evidence is limited by sparsity."
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<abstract>Euphemisms substitute socially sensitive expressions, often softening or reframing meaning, and their reliance on cultural and pragmatic context complicates modeling across languages. In this study, we investigate how cross-lingual equivalence influences transfer in multilingual euphemism detection. We categorize Potentially Euphemistic Terms (PETs) in Turkish and English into Overlapping (OPETs) and Non-Overlapping (NOPETs) subsets based on their functional, pragmatic, and semantic alignment. Our findings reveal a transfer asymmetry: semantic overlap is insufficient to guarantee positive transfer, particularly in low-resource Turkish-to-English direction, where performance can degrade even for overlapping euphemisms, and in some cases, improve under NOPET-based training. Differences in label distribution help explain these counterintuitive results. Category-level analysis suggests that transfer may be influenced by domain-specific alignment, though evidence is limited by sparsity.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T When Semantic Overlap Is Not Enough: Cross-Lingual Euphemism Transfer Between Turkish and English
%A Biyik, Hasan Can
%A Barak, Libby
%A Peng, Jing
%A Feldman, Anna
%Y Oflazer, Kemal
%Y Köksal, Abdullatif
%Y Varol, Onur
%S Proceedings of the Second Workshop Natural Language Processing for Turkic Languages (SIGTURK 2026)
%D 2026
%8 March
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Rabat, Morocco
%@ 979-8-89176-370-8
%F biyik-etal-2026-semantic
%X Euphemisms substitute socially sensitive expressions, often softening or reframing meaning, and their reliance on cultural and pragmatic context complicates modeling across languages. In this study, we investigate how cross-lingual equivalence influences transfer in multilingual euphemism detection. We categorize Potentially Euphemistic Terms (PETs) in Turkish and English into Overlapping (OPETs) and Non-Overlapping (NOPETs) subsets based on their functional, pragmatic, and semantic alignment. Our findings reveal a transfer asymmetry: semantic overlap is insufficient to guarantee positive transfer, particularly in low-resource Turkish-to-English direction, where performance can degrade even for overlapping euphemisms, and in some cases, improve under NOPET-based training. Differences in label distribution help explain these counterintuitive results. Category-level analysis suggests that transfer may be influenced by domain-specific alignment, though evidence is limited by sparsity.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.sigturk-1.11/
%P 113-125
Markdown (Informal)
[When Semantic Overlap Is Not Enough: Cross-Lingual Euphemism Transfer Between Turkish and English](https://aclanthology.org/2026.sigturk-1.11/) (Biyik et al., SIGTURK 2026)
ACL