TWICE: What Advantages Can Low-Resource Domain-Specific Embedding Model Bring? – A Case Study on Korea Financial Texts

ArXiv ID: 2502.07131 “View on arXiv”

Authors: Unknown

Abstract

Domain specificity of embedding models is critical for effective performance. However, existing benchmarks, such as FinMTEB, are primarily designed for high-resource languages, leaving low-resource settings, such as Korean, under-explored. Directly translating established English benchmarks often fails to capture the linguistic and cultural nuances present in low-resource domains. In this paper, titled TWICE: What Advantages Can Low-Resource Domain-Specific Embedding Models Bring? A Case Study on Korea Financial Texts, we introduce KorFinMTEB, a novel benchmark for the Korean financial domain, specifically tailored to reflect its unique cultural characteristics in low-resource languages. Our experimental results reveal that while the models perform robustly on a translated version of FinMTEB, their performance on KorFinMTEB uncovers subtle yet critical discrepancies, especially in tasks requiring deeper semantic understanding, that underscore the limitations of direct translation. This discrepancy highlights the necessity of benchmarks that incorporate language-specific idiosyncrasies and cultural nuances. The insights from our study advocate for the development of domain-specific evaluation frameworks that can more accurately assess and drive the progress of embedding models in low-resource settings.

Keywords: embedding models, low-resource language, benchmark evaluation, financial text, semantic understanding, equities

Complexity vs Empirical Score

• Math Complexity: 3.5/10
• Empirical Rigor: 7.2/10
• Quadrant: Street Traders
• Why: The paper is heavy on empirical evaluation, featuring a novel benchmark (KorFinMTEB), multiple datasets, and comparative results on SOTA models, but involves almost no advanced mathematics, focusing instead on NLP engineering and data curation.

  flowchart TD
    A["Research Goal: Evaluate advantages of domain-specific embedding models for low-resource Korean financial text"] --> B["KorFinMTEB Benchmark Creation<br/>(Cultural & Linguistic Nuances)"]
    A --> C["Translated FinMTEB Benchmark<br/>(Baseline Comparison)"]
    B --> D["Evaluation & Analysis<br/>(Korean Financial Embeddings)"]
    C --> D
    D --> E{"Key Findings: Discrepancy & Necessity"}
    E --> F["Models perform robustly on Translated FinMTEB<br/>(Superficial Understanding)"]
    E --> G["Models struggle on KorFinMTEB<br/>(Reveals Semantic & Cultural Gaps)"]
    G --> H["Advocates for Domain-Specific Benchmarks<br/>(Accurate Low-Resource Assessment)"]