Multi-Task Contrastive Learning for 8192-Token Bilingual Text Embeddings

TL;DR

This paper presents advanced bilingual text embedding models supporting up to 8192 tokens, improving performance on semantic tasks and expanding benchmarks for German and Spanish embeddings.

Contribution

Introduces a novel multi-task learning approach for bilingual embeddings capable of processing long texts, outperforming existing models in cross-lingual semantic tasks.

Findings

Enhanced performance on semantic textual similarity tasks

Supports longer texts up to 8192 tokens

Expanded MTEB benchmark for German and Spanish

Abstract

We introduce a novel suite of state-of-the-art bilingual text embedding models that are designed to support English and another target language. These models are capable of processing lengthy text inputs with up to 8192 tokens, making them highly versatile for a range of natural language processing tasks such as text retrieval, clustering, and semantic textual similarity (STS) calculations. By focusing on bilingual models and introducing a unique multi-task learning objective, we have significantly improved the model performance on STS tasks, which outperforms the capabilities of existing multilingual models in both target language understanding and cross-lingual evaluation tasks. Moreover, our bilingual models are more efficient, requiring fewer parameters and less memory due to their smaller vocabulary needs. Furthermore, we have expanded the Massive Text Embedding Benchmark (MTEB) to include benchmarks for German and Spanish embedding models. This integration aims to stimulate further research and advancement in text embedding technologies for these languages.