Analysing LLMs for spelling normalization of 18th century Portuguese

Abstract

This paper presents an evaluation of large language models (LLMs) applied to the task of normalizing eighteenth-century written texts. Several LLMs were employed to process texts in pre-contemporary spellings and update them according to contemporary Portuguese orthography. Their outputs were rigorously compared against a curated reference corpus. The findings indicate marked disparities in model performance, with the Portuguese specialized model Sabiá demonstrating a statistically significant advantage over multilingual alternatives.