It Takes Two: A Dual Stage Approach for Terminology-Aware Translation

AbstractThis paper introduces DuTerm, a novel two-stage architecture for terminology-constrained machine translation. Our system combines a terminology-aware NMT model, adapted via fine-tuning on large-scale synthetic data, with a prompt-based LLM for post-editing. The LLM stage refines NMT output and enforces terminology adherence. We evaluate DuTerm on English-to German, English-to-Spanish, and English-to-Russian for the WMT 2025 Terminology Shared Task. We demonstrate that flexible, context-driven terminology handling by the LLM consistently yields higher quality translations than strict constraint enforcement. Our results highlight a critical trade-off, revealing that an LLM’s intrinsic knowledge often provides a stronger basis for high-quality translation than rigid, externally imposed constraints.