---
license: mit
datasets:
- jhu-clsp/mmbert-decay
- jhu-clsp/mmbert-midtraining
- jhu-clsp/mmbert-pretrain-p1-fineweb2-langs
- jhu-clsp/mmbert-pretrain-p2-fineweb2-remaining
- jhu-clsp/mmbert-pretrain-p3-others
pipeline_tag: fill-mask
---

# mmBERT: A Modern Multilingual Encoder

[![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-MIT-yellow.svg)](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
[![Paper](https://img.shields.io/badge/Paper-Arxiv-red)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06888)
[![Model](https://img.shields.io/badge/🤗%20Hugging%20Face-Model-blue)](https://huggingface.co/jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base)
[![Collection](https://img.shields.io/badge/🤗%20Model%20Collection-blue)](https://huggingface.co/collections/jhu-clsp/mmbert-a-modern-multilingual-encoder-68b725831d7c6e3acc435ed4)
[![GitHub](https://img.shields.io/badge/GitHub-Code-black)](https://github.com/jhu-clsp/mmBERT)

> TL;DR: A state-of-the-art multilingual encoder trained on 3T+ tokens across 1800+ languages, introducing novel techniques for learning low-resource languages during the decay phase.

mmBERT is a modern multilingual encoder that significantly outperforms previous generation models like XLM-R on classification, embedding, and retrieval tasks. Built on the ModernBERT architecture with novel multilingual training innovations, mmBERT demonstrates that low-resource languages can be effectively learned during the decay phase of training. It is also significantly faster than any previous multilingual encoder.

## Table of Contents
- [Highlights](#highlights)
- [Quick Start](#quick-start)
- [Model Description](#model-description)
- [Novel Training Innovations](#novel-training-innovations)
- [Model Family](#model-family)
- [Training Data](#training-data)
- [Usage Examples](#usage-examples)
- [Fine-tuning Examples](#fine-tuning-examples)
- [Model Architecture](#model-architecture)
- [Citation](#citation)


## Quick Start

### Installation
```bash
pip install torch>=1.9.0
pip install transformers>=4.21.0
```

### Usage

```python
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModel

tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base")
model = AutoModel.from_pretrained("jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base")

inputs = tokenizer("Hello world", return_tensors="pt")
outputs = model(**inputs)
```

## Model Description

mmBERT represents the first significant advancement over XLM-R for massively multilingual encoder models. Key features include:

1. **Massive Language Coverage** - Trained on over 1800 languages with progressive inclusion strategy
2. **Modern Architecture** - Built on ModernBERT foundation with Flash Attention 2 and unpadding techniques
3. **Novel Training Recipe** - Introduces inverse mask scheduling and temperature sampling
4. **Open Training Data** - Complete 3T+ token dataset publicly available
5. **Decay Phase Innovation** - Demonstrates effective learning of low-resource languages in final training phase

The model uses bidirectional attention with masked language modeling objectives, optimized specifically for multilingual understanding and cross-lingual transfer.

## Novel Training Innovations

**Progressive Language Addition**: Start with 60 high-resource languages, expand to 110 mid-resource languages, then include all 1833 languages in decay phase.

**Inverse Mask Schedule**: Reduce mask ratio from 30% → 15% → 5% across training phases for progressively refined learning.

**Inverse Temperature Sampling**: Adjust multilingual sampling from high-resource bias (τ=0.7) to uniform sampling (τ=0.3).

**Model Merging**: Combine English-focused, high-resource, and all-language decay variants using TIES merging.

## Model Family

| Model | Total Params | Non-embed Params | Languages | Download |
|:------|:-------------|:------------------|:----------|:---------|
| [mmBERT-small](https://huggingface.co/jhu-clsp/mmBERT-small) | 140M | 42M | 1800+ | [![Download](https://img.shields.io/badge/🤗-Download-blue)](https://huggingface.co/jhu-clsp/mmBERT-small) |
| [mmBERT-base](https://huggingface.co/jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base) | 307M | 110M | 1800+ | [![Download](https://img.shields.io/badge/🤗-Download-blue)](https://huggingface.co/jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base) |

## Training Data

mmBERT training data is publicly available across different phases:

| Phase | Dataset | Tokens | Description |
|:------|:--------|:-------|:------------|
| Pre-training P1 | [mmbert-pretrain-p1](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-pretrain-p1-fineweb2-langs) | 2.3T | 60 languages, foundational training |
| Pre-training P2 | [mmbert-pretrain-p2](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-pretrain-p2-fineweb2-langs) | - | Extension data for pre-training phase |
| Pre-training P3 | [mmbert-pretrain-p3](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-pretrain-p3-fineweb2-langs) | - | Final pre-training data |
| Mid-training | [mmbert-midtraining](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-midtraining-data) | 600B | 110 languages, context extension to 8K |
| Decay Phase | [mmbert-decay](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-decay-data) | 100B | 1833 languages, premium quality |

**Data Sources**: Filtered DCLM (English), FineWeb2 (multilingual), FineWeb2-HQ (20 high-resource languages), Wikipedia (MegaWika), code repositories (StarCoder, ProLong), academic papers (ArXiv, PeS2o), and community discussions (StackExchange).

## Model Architecture

| Parameter | mmBERT-small | mmBERT-base |
|:----------|:-------------|:------------|
| Layers | 22 | 22 |
| Hidden Size | 384 | 768 |
| Intermediate Size | 1152 | 1152 |
| Attention Heads | 6 | 12 |
| Total Parameters | 140M | 307M |
| Non-embedding Parameters | 42M | 110M |
| Max Sequence Length | 8192 | 8192 |
| Vocabulary Size | 256,000 | 256,000 |
| Tokenizer | Gemma 2 | Gemma 2 |

## Usage Examples

### Masked Language Modeling

```python
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForMaskedLM
import torch

tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base")
model = AutoModelForMaskedLM.from_pretrained("jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base")

def predict_masked_token(text):
    inputs = tokenizer(text, return_tensors="pt")
    with torch.no_grad():
        outputs = model(**inputs)
    
    mask_indices = torch.where(inputs["input_ids"] == tokenizer.mask_token_id)
    predictions = outputs.logits[mask_indices]
    top_tokens = torch.topk(predictions, 5, dim=-1)
    
    return [tokenizer.decode(token) for token in top_tokens.indices[0]]

# Works across languages
texts = [
    "The capital of France is <mask>.",
    "La capital de España es <mask>.",
    "Die Hauptstadt von Deutschland ist <mask>."
]

for text in texts:
    predictions = predict_masked_token(text)
    print(f"Text: {text}")
    print(f"Predictions: {predictions}")
```

### Cross-lingual Embeddings

```python
from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModel
import torch
from sklearn.metrics.pairwise import cosine_similarity

tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base")
model = AutoModel.from_pretrained("jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base")

def get_embeddings(texts):
    inputs = tokenizer(texts, padding=True, truncation=True, return_tensors="pt")
    
    with torch.no_grad():
        outputs = model(**inputs)
        embeddings = outputs.last_hidden_state.mean(dim=1)
    
    return embeddings.numpy()

multilingual_texts = [
    "Artificial intelligence is transforming technology",
    "La inteligencia artificial está transformando la tecnología",
    "L'intelligence artificielle transforme la technologie", 
    "人工智能正在改变技术"
]

embeddings = get_embeddings(multilingual_texts)
similarities = cosine_similarity(embeddings)
print("Cross-lingual similarity matrix:")
print(similarities)
```

## Fine-tuning Examples

### Dense Retrieval with Sentence Transformers

<details>
<summary>Click to expand dense retrieval fine-tuning example</summary>

```python
import argparse
from datasets import load_dataset
from sentence_transformers import (
    SentenceTransformer,
    SentenceTransformerTrainer,
    SentenceTransformerTrainingArguments,
)
from sentence_transformers.evaluation import TripletEvaluator
from sentence_transformers.losses import CachedMultipleNegativesRankingLoss
from sentence_transformers.training_args import BatchSamplers

def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument("--lr", type=float, default=8e-5)
    parser.add_argument("--model_name", type=str, default="jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base")
    args = parser.parse_args()
    
    lr = args.lr
    model_name = args.model_name
    model_shortname = model_name.split("/")[-1]

    model = SentenceTransformer(model_name)

    dataset = load_dataset(
        "sentence-transformers/msmarco-co-condenser-margin-mse-sym-mnrl-mean-v1",
        "triplet-hard",
        split="train",
    )
    dataset_dict = dataset.train_test_split(test_size=1_000, seed=12)
    train_dataset = dataset_dict["train"].select(range(1_250_000))
    eval_dataset = dataset_dict["test"]

    loss = CachedMultipleNegativesRankingLoss(model, mini_batch_size=16)
    run_name = f"{model_shortname}-DPR-{lr}"
    
    training_args = SentenceTransformerTrainingArguments(
        output_dir=f"output/{model_shortname}/{run_name}",
        num_train_epochs=1,
        per_device_train_batch_size=512,
        per_device_eval_batch_size=512,
        warmup_ratio=0.05,
        fp16=False,
        bf16=True,
        batch_sampler=BatchSamplers.NO_DUPLICATES,
        learning_rate=lr,
        save_strategy="steps",
        save_steps=500,
        save_total_limit=2,
        logging_steps=500,
        run_name=run_name,
    )

    dev_evaluator = TripletEvaluator(
        anchors=eval_dataset["query"],
        positives=eval_dataset["positive"],
        negatives=eval_dataset["negative"],
        name="msmarco-co-condenser-dev",
    )
    dev_evaluator(model)

    trainer = SentenceTransformerTrainer(
        model=model,
        args=training_args,
        train_dataset=train_dataset,
        eval_dataset=eval_dataset,
        loss=loss,
        evaluator=dev_evaluator,
    )
    trainer.train()

    model.save_pretrained(f"output/{model_shortname}/{run_name}/final")
    model.push_to_hub(run_name, private=False)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
```

</details>

### Cross-lingual Classification

<details>
<summary>Click to expand multilingual classification fine-tuning example</summary>

```python
from transformers import (
    AutoTokenizer,
    AutoModelForSequenceClassification, 
    TrainingArguments,
    Trainer
)
from datasets import load_dataset
import numpy as np
from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score, f1_score

def compute_metrics(eval_pred):
    predictions, labels = eval_pred
    predictions = np.argmax(predictions, axis=1)
    return {
        'accuracy': accuracy_score(labels, predictions),
        'f1': f1_score(labels, predictions, average='weighted')
    }

def main():
    model_name = "jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base"
    
    tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
    model = AutoModelForSequenceClassification.from_pretrained(
        model_name,
        num_labels=3
    )
    
    dataset = load_dataset("xnli", "all_languages")
    
    def tokenize_function(examples):
        texts = [f"{p} {tokenizer.sep_token} {h}" 
                for p, h in zip(examples["premise"], examples["hypothesis"])]
        
        return tokenizer(
            texts,
            truncation=True,
            padding=True,
            max_length=512
        )
    
    train_dataset = dataset["train"].map(tokenize_function, batched=True)
    eval_dataset = dataset["validation"].map(tokenize_function, batched=True)
    
    training_args = TrainingArguments(
        output_dir="./mmbert-xnli",
        learning_rate=3e-5,
        per_device_train_batch_size=32,
        per_device_eval_batch_size=32,
        num_train_epochs=3,
        weight_decay=0.01,
        evaluation_strategy="epoch",
        save_strategy="epoch",
        load_best_model_at_end=True,
        metric_for_best_model="f1",
        greater_is_better=True,
    )
    
    trainer = Trainer(
        model=model,
        args=training_args,
        train_dataset=train_dataset,
        eval_dataset=eval_dataset,
        compute_metrics=compute_metrics,
    )
    
    trainer.train()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
```

</details>

### Multilingual Reranking

<details>
<summary>Click to expand multilingual reranking fine-tuning example</summary>

```python
import logging
from datasets import load_dataset
from sentence_transformers.cross_encoder import (
    CrossEncoder,
    CrossEncoderModelCardData,
    CrossEncoderTrainer,
    CrossEncoderTrainingArguments,
)
from sentence_transformers.cross_encoder.evaluation import CrossEncoderNanoBEIREvaluator
from sentence_transformers.cross_encoder.losses import BinaryCrossEntropyLoss
from sentence_transformers.util import mine_hard_negatives
from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer
import torch

def main():
    model_name = "jhu-clsp/mmBERT-base"
    train_batch_size = 32
    num_epochs = 2
    num_hard_negatives = 7

    model = CrossEncoder(
        model_name,
        model_card_data=CrossEncoderModelCardData(
            language="multilingual",
            license="mit",
        ),
    )
    
    full_dataset = load_dataset("sentence-transformers/gooaq", split="train").select(range(50_000))
    dataset_dict = full_dataset.train_test_split(test_size=1_000, seed=42)
    train_dataset = dataset_dict["train"]
    eval_dataset = dataset_dict["test"]

    embedding_model = SentenceTransformer("sentence-transformers/paraphrase-multilingual-MiniLM-L12-v2", device="cpu")
    hard_train_dataset = mine_hard_negatives(
        train_dataset,
        embedding_model,
        num_negatives=num_hard_negatives,
        margin=0,
        range_min=0,
        range_max=100,
        sampling_strategy="top",
        batch_size=2048,
        output_format="labeled-pair",
        use_faiss=True,
    )

    loss = BinaryCrossEntropyLoss(model=model, pos_weight=torch.tensor(num_hard_negatives))

    nano_beir_evaluator = CrossEncoderNanoBEIREvaluator(
        dataset_names=["msmarco", "nfcorpus", "nq"],
        batch_size=train_batch_size,
    )

    args = CrossEncoderTrainingArguments(
        output_dir="./mmbert-reranker",
        num_train_epochs=num_epochs,
        per_device_train_batch_size=train_batch_size,
        per_device_eval_batch_size=train_batch_size,
        learning_rate=2e-5,
        warmup_ratio=0.1,
        fp16=False,
        bf16=True,
        dataloader_num_workers=4,
        load_best_model_at_end=True,
        metric_for_best_model="eval_msmarco_ndcg@10",
        eval_strategy="steps",
        eval_steps=1000,
        save_strategy="steps",
        save_steps=1000,
        save_total_limit=2,
        logging_steps=200,
        seed=42,
    )

    trainer = CrossEncoderTrainer(
        model=model,
        args=args,
        train_dataset=hard_train_dataset,
        loss=loss,
        evaluator=nano_beir_evaluator,
    )
    trainer.train()

    model.save_pretrained("./mmbert-reranker/final")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
```

</details>

## Training Data

mmBERT was trained on a carefully curated 3T+ token multilingual dataset:

| Phase | Dataset | Description |
|:------|:--------|:------------|
| [Pre-training P1](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-pretrain-p1-fineweb2-langs) | 2.3T tokens | 60 languages, diverse data mixture |
| [Pre-training P2](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-pretrain-p2-fineweb2-langs) | - | Extension data for pre-training |
| [Pre-training P3](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-pretrain-p3-fineweb2-langs) | - | Final pre-training data |
| [Mid-training](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-midtraining-data) | 600B tokens | 110 languages, context extension |
| [Decay Phase](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jhu-clsp/mmbert-decay-data) | 100B tokens | 1833 languages, premium quality |

**Primary Sources:**
- **Filtered DCLM**: High-quality English content
- **FineWeb2**: Broad multilingual web coverage (1800+ languages)
- **FineWeb2-HQ**: Filtered subset of 20 high-resource languages
- **Code**: StarCoder and ProLong repositories
- **Academic**: ArXiv papers and PeS2o scientific content
- **Reference**: Wikipedia (MegaWika) and textbooks
- **Community**: StackExchange discussions


## Citation

If you use mmBERT in your research, please cite our work:

```bibtex
@misc{marone2025mmbertmodernmultilingualencoder,
      title={mmBERT: A Modern Multilingual Encoder with Annealed Language Learning}, 
      author={Marc Marone and Orion Weller and William Fleshman and Eugene Yang and Dawn Lawrie and Benjamin Van Durme},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2509.06888},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06888}, 
}
```
"""