# English-Welsh Cross-Lingual Embeddings
## 5 Results
### Qualitative Evaluation  
The cross-lingual vector space can be manually explored in order to evaluate how well both the monolingual embeddings capture semantic relationships within a language, and also how well the cross-lingual embeddings align. We start this by selecting a small set of prototype words in the first language, and inspect their nearest neighbors in the second language. We then compare this to the reverse procedure: selecting the same translated, words in the second language, and inspect their nearest neighbors in the first.  
Table 3 lists a selection of ten words, and their translations, with their 10 nearest neighbors in their opposite languages. In general, the cross-lingual embeddings align well, with the common nouns, adjectives, and verbs mapping to very similar and very related words in both directions. We also attempted to find closely related words to _hirneath_, a word often claimed to be untranslatable into English, which still gave accurate nearest neighbors, referring to feelings of longing and yearing for home.  
More specialized vocabulary, such as foreign loadwords (_croissant_), and proper nouns (_French_, and place names such as _Cardiff_ and _Tonypand_) show some asymmetry in the alignment of the embeddings. Here, the Welsh nearest neighbors to English words are much more relevant and semantically related than the English nearest neighbors of Welsh words. For example, the Welsh nearest neighbors to _croissant_ gives breakfast foods and pastries, while the English nearest neighbors are generic foodstuffs. Similarly, the Welsh nearest neighbors to _French_ gives Euro-centric languages and adjectives, while the English nearest neighbors to _ffrangge_ (the French language) gives languages from further afield. It is also interesting to note that in Welsh, the words _ffrangeg_ (the French language) is different to _ffrengig_ (the French nationality), and all the English nearest neighbors to _ffrangeg_ are languages or language-related terms, rather than words related to nationalities, while a mix of the two is seen in the Welsh nearest neighbors of _French_.  
Geographic place names are also interesting, with the Welsh nearest neighbors of English place names giving more local and geographically closer place names than the English nearest neighbors of Welsh place names. This may be an effect of the English training corpus having a much more international and broader scope than the Welsh training corpus. For example, _Cardiff_/_caerdydd_, the capital of Wales and thus an important word in the Welsh language: its Welsh nearest neighbors are other major Welsh towns and cities, while it's English nearest neighbors are populated with Australian places, maybe referencing the much smaller Australian town of Cardiff.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l} \hline \hline _word\_cy_ & **Closest English Words to _word\_cy_** & **Closest Welsh Words to _word\_en_** \\ \hline nofio (_swin_) & swim, swimming, kayak, paddling, rowing, waterski, swam, swim & nofio (_satin_), detifo (_distiny_), cedded (_walking_), blynnio (_distiny_), paddling), watersport; tessisting, canoe & \\ \hline glaw (_train_) & rain, snow, fog, heavyvrain, downpour, rainstorm, heavyvrains, & rain & glaw (_train_), eira (_now_), cenllys (_hail_), wicht (_dev_), cawodydd (_showers_), rhew (_frosl_), taranau (_thunder_), barrug (_frosl_), gemllys (_hail_), dafnau (_drugs_) \\ \hline hapus (_happy_) & happy; pleased, glarteful, delighted, thankful, anxious, & happy & hapus (_happy_), bodon (_satisfied_), friend (_kind_), lhaew (_jofth_), rerst (_sad_), jon (_lofth_), jon