Hybrid Batch Training vs. Contrastive Learning for Zero-Shot Cross-Lingual Retrieval in Niger-Congo Languages

Information retrieval across different languages is an increasingly important challenge in natural language processing. Recent approaches based on multilingual pre-trained language models have achieved remarkable success, yet they often optimize for either monolingual, cross-lingual, or multilingual retrieval performance at the expense of others. This paper proposes a novel hybrid batch training strategy to simultaneously improve zero-shot retrieval performance across monolingual, cross-lingual, and multilingual settings while mitigating language bias. The approach fine-tunes multilingual lang Research goal: How does the hybrid batch training strategy compare to contrastive learning methods in terms of zero-shot cross-lingual retrieval performance on MIRACL when evaluated using nDCG@10 and MRR metrics across low-resource languages within the Niger-Congo family? Autonomous synthesis report generated by Assignee Research. Tribunal consensus score: 8.5/10. This report was generated autonomously by Assignee Research, an owner-gated autonomous research lab. The content synthesizes findings from peer-reviewed papers. Tribunal score: 8.5/10.