This model translates from Kabardian to Russian. Kabardian is an endangered Northwest Caucasian language with approximately 500,000 speakers. It features complex polysynthetic morphology, 50+ consonants, and ergative-absolutive alignment.

Intended Use

Primary uses:

Language documentation and digitization
Educational content translation
Cultural heritage preservation
Low-resource NMT research
Supporting Kabardian speakers in accessing Russian content

Limitations:

Non-commercial use only (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Best performance on everyday language
May struggle with modern technical terms not in training data
Requires proper handling of Kabardian-specific character Ӏ (palochka)

Training Data

Dataset: adiga-ai/circassian-parallel-corpus

Subset: kbd_ru (Kabardian → Russian)
Total training examples: ~120K parallel sentence pairs
Dataset license: CC BY 4.0
Dataset author: Anzor Qunash (adiga.ai)
Content: Dictionary entries, folklore texts, proverbs, everyday expressions

Training Procedure

Base Model

Architecture: Marian Transformer (transformer-align)
Base: Helsinki-NLP/opus-mt-en-ru (English-Russian translation)
Transfer learning: Adapted from English-Russian to Kabardian-Russian

Hyperparameters

yaml

base_model: Helsinki-NLP/opus-mt-en-ru
training_examples: 200,000
epochs: 7
batch_size: 32
learning_rate: 3e-4
optimizer: AdamW
max_sequence_length: 128
warmup_steps: 500
weight_decay: 0.01
framework: transformers 4.36.0

Special Preprocessing

The model uses a special character mapping for training:

Kabardian Ӏ (palochka) → I (Latin I) during training
I → Ӏ restored during inference

This ensures better tokenization compatibility with the MarianMT tokenizer.

Performance

Benchmark Results

Tested on 1,000 examples from adiga-ai/circassian-parallel-corpus:

Metric	Score
BLEU	28.13
chrF	50.07
TER	63.50
Exact Match	6.4%
Speed	27.1 examples/sec
Avg Time	37ms/example

Test Configuration:

Test size: 1,000 examples
Sampling: Every 50th sentence from corpus
Generation: beam_search (num_beams=4)
Device: Apple M-series (MPS)
Seed: 42 (reproducible)

Translation Examples

Kabardian (Input)	Russian (Output)
Хабзэ зыхэмылъым жьантӀэр хуохъур кӀуапӀэ	У того, у кого нет обычаев, почетное место становится проходным местом.
КӀэщӀу жыпӀэмэ, я псэр зы чысэм илът.	Короче говоря, их душа лежала в одном кошельке.
Шухьэр Кесарие къалэм щынэсым, ӏэтащхьэм тхылъыр ир	Когда враги добрались до города Кесария, в главе...
щӀэныгъэм и унэтӀыныгъэщӀэм и ублакӀуэ	учитель нового направления науки
Сэтэней абы сагрисефэ щищӀауэ, нартыжьхэр щызэхуишэсауэ щызэхэст.	Сатаней сидела, собирав старинных нартов, сделав там сагрисефию.

Note: The model successfully handles complex Kabardian morphology and preserves meaning in Russian translations.

How to Use

Installation

pip install transformers torch sentencepiece

Basic Usage

python

from transformers import MarianMTModel, MarianTokenizer

# Load model and tokenizer
model_name = "kubataba/kbd-ru-opus"
tokenizer = MarianTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
model = MarianMTModel.from_pretrained(model_name)

# Translation function
def translate_kbd_to_ru(text):
    # Preprocess: Ӏ → I for tokenization
    processed_text = text.replace('Ӏ', 'I').replace('ӏ', 'I')
    
    inputs = tokenizer(processed_text, return_tensors="pt", padding=True)
    outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_length=128, num_beams=4)
    translation = tokenizer.decode(outputs[0], skip_special_tokens=True)
    return translation

# Example
kabardian_text = "Сэлам!"
russian_text = translate_kbd_to_ru(kabardian_text)
print(f"KBD: {kabardian_text}")
print(f"RU: {russian_text}")

Batch Translation

python

texts = [
    "Уи пщэдджыжь фӀыуэ!",
    "Сыт укъэпсэлъар?",
    "Ди лъэпкъым и бзэр"
]

# Preprocess all texts
processed_texts = [t.replace('Ӏ', 'I').replace('ӏ', 'I') for t in texts]

inputs = tokenizer(processed_texts, return_tensors="pt", padding=True, truncation=True)
outputs = model.generate(**inputs, max_length=128, num_beams=4)
translations = [tokenizer.decode(out, skip_special_tokens=True) for out in outputs]

for src, tgt in zip(texts, translations):
    print(f"KBD: {src} → RU: {tgt}")

Limitations and Bias

Complex morphology: Kabardian's polysynthetic structure may result in one-to-many mappings to Russian
Character handling: Requires preprocessing of palochka (Ӏ → I) before tokenization
Domain adaptation: Best performance on text types similar to training data
Technical vocabulary: May struggle with modern technical/specialized terms
Endangered language: Limited real-world validation data due to language endangerment
Dialectal variation: Trained on literary Kabardian; dialectal forms may produce unexpected results

Ethical Considerations

This model contributes to digital language preservation for Kabardian, an endangered language.

Important considerations:

Machine translation should complement, not replace, human translators
Cultural sensitivity is essential when working with indigenous languages
The model may not capture all nuances of Kabardian language and culture
Translations should be reviewed by native speakers for critical applications
Supporting Kabardian language education and preservation is crucial

About Kabardian Language

Kabardian (Adyghe-Kabardian, East Circassian) is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by approximately 500,000 people in:

Kabardino-Balkaria (Russia)
Karachay-Cherkessia (Russia)
Turkey (diaspora communities)
Middle East (diaspora communities)

Linguistic features:

Phonology: 50+ consonant phonemes (one of the world's largest inventories)
Morphology: Polysynthetic - complex word formation
Syntax: Ergative-absolutive alignment
Writing: Cyrillic script + palochka (Ӏ) for glottal stop
Status: Endangered (UNESCO classification)

License and Attribution

This Model

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Author: Eduard Emkuzhev
Year: 2025

Base Model

Model: Helsinki-NLP/opus-mt-en-ru
License: Apache 2.0
Authors: Language Technology Research Group at the University of Helsinki
Link: https://huggingface.co/Helsinki-NLP/opus-mt-en-ru

Training Dataset

Dataset: Circassian-Russian Parallel Corpus v1.0
License: CC BY 4.0
Author: Anzor Qunash (adiga.ai)
Link: https://huggingface.co/datasets/adiga-ai/circassian-parallel-corpus

Citation

If you use this model in your research, please cite:

bibtex

@misc{emkuzhev2025kbdru,
  author = {Eduard Emkuzhev},
  title = {Kabardian-Russian Neural Machine Translation Model},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {HuggingFace},
  howpublished = {\url{https://huggingface.co/kubataba/kbd-ru-opus}}
}

Please also cite the base model and dataset:

bibtex

@misc{helsinki-nlp-opus-en-ru,
  author = {Language Technology Research Group at the University of Helsinki},
  title = {OPUS-MT English-Russian Translation Model},
  year = {2020},
  publisher = {HuggingFace},
  howpublished = {\url{https://huggingface.co/Helsinki-NLP/opus-mt-en-ru}}
}

@dataset{qunash2025circassian,
  author = {Anzor Qunash},
  title = {Circassian-Russian Parallel Text Corpus v1.0},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {adiga.ai},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/adiga-ai/circassian-parallel-corpus}
}

Acknowledgments

Helsinki-NLP team for the excellent OPUS-MT base models
Anzor Qunash (adiga.ai) for creating and publishing the Circassian-Russian Parallel Corpus
Kabardian language community for preserving and promoting their language
All contributors to Circassian language digitization efforts

Related Models

Reverse direction: kubataba/ru-kbd-opus - Russian to Kabardian
Base model: Helsinki-NLP/opus-mt-en-ru
Dataset: adiga-ai/circassian-parallel-corpus

Technical Details

Framework: PyTorch + Transformers
Model size: ~300MB
Vocabulary size: ~62,5K tokens
Parameters: ~74M
Inference: CPU and GPU compatible
Optimal device: GPU or Apple Silicon (MPS)

Contact

Author: Eduard Emkuzhev
Email: info@copperline.info
GitHub: https://github.com/kubataba
Issues: Report issues

For commercial licensing inquiries, please contact via email.

Model Card Authors: Eduard Emkuzhev

Last Updated: December 2025

Version: 1.0.1