Google Neural Machine Translation

In this notebook, we are going to train Google NMT on IWSLT 2015 English-Vietnamese Dataset. The building process includes four steps: 1) load and process dataset, 2) create sampler and DataLoader, 3) build model, and 4) write training epochs.

Load MXNET and Gluon

import warnings
warnings.filterwarnings('ignore')

import argparse
import time
import random
import os
import logging
import numpy as np
import mxnet as mx
from mxnet import gluon
import gluonnlp as nlp
import nmt

Hyper-parameters

np.random.seed(100)
random.seed(100)
mx.random.seed(10000)
ctx = mx.gpu(0)

# parameters for dataset
dataset = 'IWSLT2015'
src_lang, tgt_lang = 'en', 'vi'
src_max_len, tgt_max_len = 50, 50

# parameters for model
num_hidden = 512
num_layers = 2
num_bi_layers = 1
dropout = 0.2

# parameters for training
batch_size, test_batch_size = 128, 32
num_buckets = 5
epochs = 1
clip = 5
lr = 0.001
lr_update_factor = 0.5
log_interval = 10
save_dir = 'gnmt_en_vi_u512'

#parameters for testing
beam_size = 10
lp_alpha = 1.0
lp_k = 5

nmt.utils.logging_config(save_dir)

Load and Preprocess Dataset

The following shows how to process the dataset and cache the processed dataset for future use. The processing steps include: 1) clip the source and target sequences, 2) split the string input to a list of tokens, 3) map the string token into its integer index in the vocabulary, and 4) append end-of-sentence (EOS) token to source sentence and add BOS and EOS tokens to target sentence.

def cache_dataset(dataset, prefix):
    """Cache the processed npy dataset  the dataset into a npz

    Parameters
    ----------
    dataset : gluon.data.SimpleDataset
    file_path : str
    """
    if not os.path.exists(nmt._constants.CACHE_PATH):
        os.makedirs(nmt._constants.CACHE_PATH)
    src_data = np.array([ele[0] for ele in dataset])
    tgt_data = np.array([ele[1] for ele in dataset])
    np.savez(os.path.join(nmt._constants.CACHE_PATH, prefix + '.npz'), src_data=src_data, tgt_data=tgt_data)


def load_cached_dataset(prefix):
    cached_file_path = os.path.join(nmt._constants.CACHE_PATH, prefix + '.npz')
    if os.path.exists(cached_file_path):
        print('Load cached data from {}'.format(cached_file_path))
        dat = np.load(cached_file_path)
        return gluon.data.ArrayDataset(np.array(dat['src_data']), np.array(dat['tgt_data']))
    else:
        return None


class TrainValDataTransform(object):
    """Transform the machine translation dataset.

    Clip source and the target sentences to the maximum length. For the source sentence, append the
    EOS. For the target sentence, append BOS and EOS.

    Parameters
    ----------
    src_vocab : Vocab
    tgt_vocab : Vocab
    src_max_len : int
    tgt_max_len : int
    """
    def __init__(self, src_vocab, tgt_vocab, src_max_len, tgt_max_len):
        self._src_vocab = src_vocab
        self._tgt_vocab = tgt_vocab
        self._src_max_len = src_max_len
        self._tgt_max_len = tgt_max_len

    def __call__(self, src, tgt):
        if self._src_max_len > 0:
            src_sentence = self._src_vocab[src.split()[:self._src_max_len]]
        else:
            src_sentence = self._src_vocab[src.split()]
        if self._tgt_max_len > 0:
            tgt_sentence = self._tgt_vocab[tgt.split()[:self._tgt_max_len]]
        else:
            tgt_sentence = self._tgt_vocab[tgt.split()]
        src_sentence.append(self._src_vocab[self._src_vocab.eos_token])
        tgt_sentence.insert(0, self._tgt_vocab[self._tgt_vocab.bos_token])
        tgt_sentence.append(self._tgt_vocab[self._tgt_vocab.eos_token])
        src_npy = np.array(src_sentence, dtype=np.int32)
        tgt_npy = np.array(tgt_sentence, dtype=np.int32)
        return src_npy, tgt_npy


def process_dataset(dataset, src_vocab, tgt_vocab, src_max_len=-1, tgt_max_len=-1):
    start = time.time()
    dataset_processed = dataset.transform(TrainValDataTransform(src_vocab, tgt_vocab,
                                                                src_max_len,
                                                                tgt_max_len), lazy=False)
    end = time.time()
    print('Processing time spent: {}'.format(end - start))
    return dataset_processed


def load_translation_data(dataset, src_lang='en', tgt_lang='vi'):
    """Load translation dataset

    Parameters
    ----------
    dataset : str
    src_lang : str, default 'en'
    tgt_lang : str, default 'vi'

    Returns
    -------
    data_train_processed : Dataset
        The preprocessed training sentence pairs
    data_val_processed : Dataset
        The preprocessed validation sentence pairs
    data_test_processed : Dataset
        The preprocessed test sentence pairs
    val_tgt_sentences : list
        The target sentences in the validation set
    test_tgt_sentences : list
        The target sentences in the test set
    src_vocab : Vocab
        Vocabulary of the source language
    tgt_vocab : Vocab
        Vocabulary of the target language
    """
    common_prefix = 'IWSLT2015_{}_{}_{}_{}'.format(src_lang, tgt_lang,
                                                   src_max_len, tgt_max_len)
    data_train = nlp.data.IWSLT2015('train', src_lang=src_lang, tgt_lang=tgt_lang)
    data_val = nlp.data.IWSLT2015('val', src_lang=src_lang, tgt_lang=tgt_lang)
    data_test = nlp.data.IWSLT2015('test', src_lang=src_lang, tgt_lang=tgt_lang)
    src_vocab, tgt_vocab = data_train.src_vocab, data_train.tgt_vocab
    data_train_processed = load_cached_dataset(common_prefix + '_train')
    if not data_train_processed:
        data_train_processed = process_dataset(data_train, src_vocab, tgt_vocab,
                                               src_max_len, tgt_max_len)
        cache_dataset(data_train_processed, common_prefix + '_train')
    data_val_processed = load_cached_dataset(common_prefix + '_val')
    if not data_val_processed:
        data_val_processed = process_dataset(data_val, src_vocab, tgt_vocab)
        cache_dataset(data_val_processed, common_prefix + '_val')
    data_test_processed = load_cached_dataset(common_prefix + '_test')
    if not data_test_processed:
        data_test_processed = process_dataset(data_test, src_vocab, tgt_vocab)
        cache_dataset(data_test_processed, common_prefix + '_test')
    fetch_tgt_sentence = lambda src, tgt: tgt.split()
    val_tgt_sentences = list(data_val.transform(fetch_tgt_sentence))
    test_tgt_sentences = list(data_test.transform(fetch_tgt_sentence))
    return data_train_processed, data_val_processed, data_test_processed, \
           val_tgt_sentences, test_tgt_sentences, src_vocab, tgt_vocab


def get_data_lengths(dataset):
    return list(dataset.transform(lambda srg, tgt: (len(srg), len(tgt))))


data_train, data_val, data_test, val_tgt_sentences, test_tgt_sentences, src_vocab, tgt_vocab\
    = load_translation_data(dataset=dataset, src_lang=src_lang, tgt_lang=tgt_lang)
data_train_lengths = get_data_lengths(data_train)
data_val_lengths = get_data_lengths(data_val)
data_test_lengths = get_data_lengths(data_test)

with open(os.path.join(save_dir, 'val_gt.txt'), 'w', encoding='utf-8') as of:
    for ele in val_tgt_sentences:
        of.write(' '.join(ele) + '\n')

with open(os.path.join(save_dir, 'test_gt.txt'), 'w', encoding='utf-8') as of:
    for ele in test_tgt_sentences:
        of.write(' '.join(ele) + '\n')


data_train = data_train.transform(lambda src, tgt: (src, tgt, len(src), len(tgt)), lazy=False)
data_val = gluon.data.SimpleDataset([(ele[0], ele[1], len(ele[0]), len(ele[1]), i)
                                     for i, ele in enumerate(data_val)])
data_test = gluon.data.SimpleDataset([(ele[0], ele[1], len(ele[0]), len(ele[1]), i)
                                      for i, ele in enumerate(data_test)])

Create Sampler and DataLoader

Now, we have obtained data_train, data_val, and data_test. The next step is to construct sampler and DataLoader. The first step is to construct batchify function, which pads and stacks sequences to form mini-batch.

train_batchify_fn = nlp.data.batchify.Tuple(nlp.data.batchify.Pad(),
                                            nlp.data.batchify.Pad(),
                                            nlp.data.batchify.Stack(dtype='float32'),
                                            nlp.data.batchify.Stack(dtype='float32'))
test_batchify_fn = nlp.data.batchify.Tuple(nlp.data.batchify.Pad(),
                                           nlp.data.batchify.Pad(),
                                           nlp.data.batchify.Stack(dtype='float32'),
                                           nlp.data.batchify.Stack(dtype='float32'),
                                           nlp.data.batchify.Stack())

We can then construct bucketing samplers, which generate batches by grouping sequences with similar lengths. Here, the bucketing scheme is empirically determined.

bucket_scheme = nlp.data.ExpWidthBucket(bucket_len_step=1.2)
train_batch_sampler = nlp.data.FixedBucketSampler(lengths=data_train_lengths,
                                                  batch_size=batch_size,
                                                  num_buckets=num_buckets,
                                                  shuffle=True,
                                                  bucket_scheme=bucket_scheme)
logging.info('Train Batch Sampler:\n{}'.format(train_batch_sampler.stats()))
val_batch_sampler = nlp.data.FixedBucketSampler(lengths=data_val_lengths,
                                                batch_size=test_batch_size,
                                                num_buckets=num_buckets,
                                                shuffle=False)
logging.info('Valid Batch Sampler:\n{}'.format(val_batch_sampler.stats()))
test_batch_sampler = nlp.data.FixedBucketSampler(lengths=data_test_lengths,
                                                 batch_size=test_batch_size,
                                                 num_buckets=num_buckets,
                                                 shuffle=False)
logging.info('Test Batch Sampler:\n{}'.format(test_batch_sampler.stats()))

Given the samplers, we can create DataLoader, which is iterable.

train_data_loader = gluon.data.DataLoader(data_train,
                                          batch_sampler=train_batch_sampler,
                                          batchify_fn=train_batchify_fn,
                                          num_workers=4)
val_data_loader = gluon.data.DataLoader(data_val,
                                        batch_sampler=val_batch_sampler,
                                        batchify_fn=test_batchify_fn,
                                        num_workers=4)
test_data_loader = gluon.data.DataLoader(data_test,
                                         batch_sampler=test_batch_sampler,
                                         batchify_fn=test_batchify_fn,
                                         num_workers=4)

Build GNMT Model

After obtaining DataLoader, we can build the model. The GNMT encoder and decoder can be easily constructed by calling get_gnmt_encoder_decoder function. Then, we feed the encoder and decoder to NMTModel to construct the GNMT model. model.hybridize allows computation to be done using the symbolic backend.

encoder, decoder = nmt.gnmt.get_gnmt_encoder_decoder(hidden_size=num_hidden,
                                                     dropout=dropout,
                                                     num_layers=num_layers,
                                                     num_bi_layers=num_bi_layers)
model = nmt.translation.NMTModel(src_vocab=src_vocab, tgt_vocab=tgt_vocab, encoder=encoder, decoder=decoder,
                                 embed_size=num_hidden, prefix='gnmt_')
model.initialize(init=mx.init.Uniform(0.1), ctx=ctx)
static_alloc = True
model.hybridize(static_alloc=static_alloc)
logging.info(model)

# Due to the paddings, we need to mask out the losses corresponding to padding tokens.
loss_function = nmt.loss.SoftmaxCEMaskedLoss()
loss_function.hybridize(static_alloc=static_alloc)

We also build the beam search translator.

translator = nmt.translation.BeamSearchTranslator(model=model, beam_size=beam_size,
                                                  scorer=nlp.model.BeamSearchScorer(alpha=lp_alpha,
                                                                                    K=lp_k),
                                                  max_length=tgt_max_len + 100)
logging.info('Use beam_size={}, alpha={}, K={}'.format(beam_size, lp_alpha, lp_k))

We define evaluation function as follows. The evaluate function use beam search translator to generate outputs for the validation and testing datasets.

def evaluate(data_loader):
    """Evaluate given the data loader

    Parameters
    ----------
    data_loader : gluon.data.DataLoader

    Returns
    -------
    avg_loss : float
        Average loss
    real_translation_out : list of list of str
        The translation output
    """
    translation_out = []
    all_inst_ids = []
    avg_loss_denom = 0
    avg_loss = 0.0
    for _, (src_seq, tgt_seq, src_valid_length, tgt_valid_length, inst_ids) \
            in enumerate(data_loader):
        src_seq = src_seq.as_in_context(ctx)
        tgt_seq = tgt_seq.as_in_context(ctx)
        src_valid_length = src_valid_length.as_in_context(ctx)
        tgt_valid_length = tgt_valid_length.as_in_context(ctx)
        # Calculating Loss
        out, _ = model(src_seq, tgt_seq[:, :-1], src_valid_length, tgt_valid_length - 1)
        loss = loss_function(out, tgt_seq[:, 1:], tgt_valid_length - 1).mean().asscalar()
        all_inst_ids.extend(inst_ids.asnumpy().astype(np.int32).tolist())
        avg_loss += loss * (tgt_seq.shape[1] - 1)
        avg_loss_denom += (tgt_seq.shape[1] - 1)
        # Translate
        samples, _, sample_valid_length =\
            translator.translate(src_seq=src_seq, src_valid_length=src_valid_length)
        max_score_sample = samples[:, 0, :].asnumpy()
        sample_valid_length = sample_valid_length[:, 0].asnumpy()
        for i in range(max_score_sample.shape[0]):
            translation_out.append(
                [tgt_vocab.idx_to_token[ele] for ele in
                 max_score_sample[i][1:(sample_valid_length[i] - 1)]])
    avg_loss = avg_loss / avg_loss_denom
    real_translation_out = [None for _ in range(len(all_inst_ids))]
    for ind, sentence in zip(all_inst_ids, translation_out):
        real_translation_out[ind] = sentence
    return avg_loss, real_translation_out


def write_sentences(sentences, file_path):
    with open(file_path, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as of:
        for sent in sentences:
            of.write(' '.join(sent) + '\n')

Training Epochs

Before entering the training stage, we need to create trainer for updating the parameters. In the following example, we create a trainer that uses ADAM optimzier.

trainer = gluon.Trainer(model.collect_params(), 'adam', {'learning_rate': lr})

We can then write the training loop. During the training, we evaluate on the validation and testing datasets every epoch, and record the parameters that give the hightest BLEU score on the validation dataset. Before performing forward and backward, we first use as_in_context function to copy the mini-batch to GPU. The statement with mx.autograd.record() tells Gluon backend to compute the gradients for the part inside the block.

best_valid_bleu = 0.0
for epoch_id in range(epochs):
    log_avg_loss = 0
    log_avg_gnorm = 0
    log_wc = 0
    log_start_time = time.time()
    for batch_id, (src_seq, tgt_seq, src_valid_length, tgt_valid_length)\
            in enumerate(train_data_loader):
        # logging.info(src_seq.context) Context suddenly becomes GPU.
        src_seq = src_seq.as_in_context(ctx)
        tgt_seq = tgt_seq.as_in_context(ctx)
        src_valid_length = src_valid_length.as_in_context(ctx)
        tgt_valid_length = tgt_valid_length.as_in_context(ctx)
        with mx.autograd.record():
            out, _ = model(src_seq, tgt_seq[:, :-1], src_valid_length, tgt_valid_length - 1)
            loss = loss_function(out, tgt_seq[:, 1:], tgt_valid_length - 1).mean()
            loss = loss * (tgt_seq.shape[1] - 1) / (tgt_valid_length - 1).mean()
            loss.backward()
        grads = [p.grad(ctx) for p in model.collect_params().values()]
        gnorm = gluon.utils.clip_global_norm(grads, clip)
        trainer.step(1)
        src_wc = src_valid_length.sum().asscalar()
        tgt_wc = (tgt_valid_length - 1).sum().asscalar()
        step_loss = loss.asscalar()
        log_avg_loss += step_loss
        log_avg_gnorm += gnorm
        log_wc += src_wc + tgt_wc
        if (batch_id + 1) % log_interval == 0:
            wps = log_wc / (time.time() - log_start_time)
            logging.info('[Epoch {} Batch {}/{}] loss={:.4f}, ppl={:.4f}, gnorm={:.4f}, '
                         'throughput={:.2f}K wps, wc={:.2f}K'
                         .format(epoch_id, batch_id + 1, len(train_data_loader),
                                 log_avg_loss / log_interval,
                                 np.exp(log_avg_loss / log_interval),
                                 log_avg_gnorm / log_interval,
                                 wps / 1000, log_wc / 1000))
            log_start_time = time.time()
            log_avg_loss = 0
            log_avg_gnorm = 0
            log_wc = 0
    valid_loss, valid_translation_out = evaluate(val_data_loader)
    valid_bleu_score, _, _, _, _ = nmt.bleu.compute_bleu([val_tgt_sentences], valid_translation_out)
    logging.info('[Epoch {}] valid Loss={:.4f}, valid ppl={:.4f}, valid bleu={:.2f}'
                 .format(epoch_id, valid_loss, np.exp(valid_loss), valid_bleu_score * 100))
    test_loss, test_translation_out = evaluate(test_data_loader)
    test_bleu_score, _, _, _, _ = nmt.bleu.compute_bleu([test_tgt_sentences], test_translation_out)
    logging.info('[Epoch {}] test Loss={:.4f}, test ppl={:.4f}, test bleu={:.2f}'
                 .format(epoch_id, test_loss, np.exp(test_loss), test_bleu_score * 100))
    write_sentences(valid_translation_out,
                    os.path.join(save_dir, 'epoch{:d}_valid_out.txt').format(epoch_id))
    write_sentences(test_translation_out,
                    os.path.join(save_dir, 'epoch{:d}_test_out.txt').format(epoch_id))
    if valid_bleu_score > best_valid_bleu:
        best_valid_bleu = valid_bleu_score
        save_path = os.path.join(save_dir, 'valid_best.params')
        logging.info('Save best parameters to {}'.format(save_path))
        model.save_parameters(save_path)
    if epoch_id + 1 >= (epochs * 2) // 3:
        new_lr = trainer.learning_rate * lr_update_factor
        logging.info('Learning rate change to {}'.format(new_lr))
        trainer.set_learning_rate(new_lr)

Summary

In this notebook, we have shown how to train a GNMT model on IWSLT 2015 English-Vietnamese using Gluon NLP toolkit. The complete training script can be found here. The command to reproduce the result can be seen in the nmt scripts page.