Many Options Seen for Multilingual Alerting but Still 'Long Way to Go'

Localities and broadcasters have many options to offer some multilingual emergency alerts, but none is comprehensive, and federal rules requiring them are unlikely to help, said alerting officials Friday during the FCC Public Safety Bureau's Multilingual Alerting Workshop. “There's enough toys in the toy box, let us fit them together,” said Sage Alerting Systems President Harold Price on the event's final panel. “Multilingual still has a long way to go, but there are still things you can do,” said Public Safety Bureau Attorney Adviser David Munson.

The workshop will inform recommendations to the FCC from the Intergovernmental Advisory Committee on best practices for government entities offering multilingual alerts, said Zenji Nakazawa, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's public safety and consumer protection aide. Those recommendations are expected to be handed to the full commission by September, said FCC Office of Intergovernmental Affairs Chief Gregory Cooke.

Several FCC officials at the event said multilingual alerts are a priority for the agency. In 2017 the FCC beat a legal challenge from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council that would have forced the agency to require multilingual broadcast alerts. The FCC is committed to making alerts available for non-English speakers and those with disabilities, Nakazawa said. “I can't say enough how important" multilingual alerting is, said Justin Cain, Public Safety Bureau deputy chief-operations and emergency management. “For an emergency alert to be effective it needs to be widely accessible,” Nakazawa said.

Conference speakers said federal requirements or rules on multilingual alerts could hinder innovation. Specific rules could put companies and government entities in a restrictive “box” that makes it harder to reach solutions, said Harris County, Texas, Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator Francisco Sanchez.

Federal help with information sharing and outreach about what's available in multilingual alerting could be helpful, said Minnesota Department of Public Safety Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Manager John Dooley. ”Workshops are great; don't regulate,” said Monroe Electronics Senior Director-Strategy and Government Affairs Ed Czarnecki. The emergency alerting industry is “market driven” and will offer increased multilingual alerting as a market for it develops, Czarnecki said.

FCC data shows it's not common for government entities to offer their own multilingual alerts, said MMTC Senior Adviser David Honig, an audience member at the workshop. Of the 44 state emergency communication committee reports on multilingual EAS messages that Communications Daily (see 1905220018) viewed, 19 reported sending zero multilingual EAS messages, and less than 2 percent of EAS participants in each state that responded to the survey issued multilingual alerts. Many emergency managers don't take advantage of the alerting tech available to them, Czarnecki said. “Thousands” have access to IPAWS and don't use it, Czarnecki said.

Many of the panelists oversee existing, locally created and administered multilingual alerting efforts. WUNC-TV Chapel Hill, North Carolina, offers televised multilingual translations of emergency information, said Senior Director-Technology Fred Engel. The National Weather Service has a national program offering Spanish language translations for weather and preparedness information, said meteorologist Orlando Bermudez of the Multimedia Assistance in Spanish program.

Broadcast, wireless and cable industry panelists united in opposing alerts translation by their members or end-point devices. Cable carrier delivery of EAS is largely an “unattended” process, said NCTA Vice President Engineering Andy Scott. Asking broadcasters to translate alerts “would just not be an efficient way to go about it,” said NAB Associate General Counsel Larry Walke. Automatic translation at “the edge” could introduce errors, said CTIA Vice President Regulatory Affairs Matthew Gerst. He suggested emergency operations managers could better introduce multilingual information through links embedded in WEA messages.

Future technical developments will create more opportunities for multilingual alerting, such as ATSC 3.0 and the upcoming, higher character-count version of wireless emergency alerts, a panelist said. Technical constraints remain on how much can be accomplished, said Price. Some languages, such as Japanese and Korean, require more data to send as text, said AT&T Assistant Vice President Standards and Industry Alliances Bryan Daly. The work involved in delivering multilingual alerts is “not trivial,” Price said.