A Qualitative Investigation into LLM-Generated Multilingual Code Comments and Automatic Evaluation Metrics
Large Language Models are essential coding assistants, yet their training is predominantly English-centric. In this study, we evaluate the performance of code language models in non-English contexts, identifying challenges in their adoption and integration into multi-lingual workflows. We conduct an open-coding study to analyze errors in code comments generated by five state-of-the-art code models, CodeGemma, CodeLlama, CodeQwen1.5, GraniteCode, and StarCoder2 across five natural languages: Chinese, Dutch, English, Greek, and Polish. Our study yields a dataset of 12,500 labeled generations, which we publicly release. We then assess the reliability of standard metrics in capturing comment correctness across languages and evaluate their trustworthiness as judgment criteria. Through our open-coding investigation, we identified a taxonomy of 26 distinct error categories in model-generated code comments. They highlight variations in language cohesion, informativeness, and syntax adherence across different natural languages. Our analysis shows that while these models frequently produce partially correct comments, modern neural metrics fail to reliably differentiate meaningful completions from random noise. Notably, the significant score overlap between expert-rated correct and incorrect comments calls into question the effectiveness of these metrics in assessing generated comments.
Thu 26 JunDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
14:00 - 15:30 | |||
14:00 60mKeynote | Keynote 2 (Dr. Haipeng Cai) PROMISE 2025 Haipeng Cai University at Buffalo, SUNY | ||
15:01 14mTalk | A Qualitative Investigation into LLM-Generated Multilingual Code Comments and Automatic Evaluation Metrics PROMISE 2025 Jonathan Katzy Delft University of Technology, Yongcheng Huang Delft University of Technology, Gopal-Raj Panchu Delft University of Technology, Maksym Ziemlewski Delft University of Technology, Paris Loizides Delft University of Technology, Sander Vermeulen Delft University of Technology, Arie van Deursen TU Delft, Maliheh Izadi Delft University of Technology Pre-print | ||
15:16 9mTalk | Near-Duplicate Build Failure Detection from Continuous Integration Logs PROMISE 2025 Mingchen Li University of Helsinki, Mika Mäntylä University of Helsinki and University of Oulu, Jesse Nyyssölä University of Helsinki, Matti Luukkainen University of Helsinki |