The FCC, in the words of soon-to-depart Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, has taken “a major step forward” in expanding multilingual Wireless Emergency Alerts in response to public feedback.
As such, the Commission is now offering templates for the 18 most commonly issued and time-sensitive alerts in the 13 most commonly spoken languages in the U.S., plus English and American Sign Language (ASL).
Public safety officials will have the option to use the customizable multilingual template alerts.
Rosenworcel commented, “The language you speak shouldn’t keep you from receiving the information you or your family needs to stay safe. During an emergency, life-saving alerts should be accessible to everyone. Our public safety partners have made it clear that one of the main barriers to multilingual alerting is the ability to translate time-sensitive messages into additional languages during crises. The multilingual Wireless Emergency Alert templates we announce today are a long-time coming and will make it so officials can reach more people with urgent messages and save lives.”
Michael S. George, Associate Administrator of FEMA’s Office of National Continuity Programs, chimed in with his support. “This initiative will help alert originators communicate quickly with the public during critical emergencies,” he said.
At present, mobile devices only support WEA alerts sent in English and Spanish.
In addition, alert originators must write any Spanish translations themselves.
In October 2023, the Commission adopted rules to enable alert originators to send common alerts in more than a dozen languages without the need for a translator. To achieve this, the rules require wireless providers that participate in WEA to install and store multilingual alert templates, provided by the Commission, on mobile devices. When an alert originator sends a template-based multilingual alert, the phone will display the relevant template in the subscriber’s default language, if available. Otherwise, the phone should display the alert in English.
In February 2024, as directed by the Commission, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau sought comment on implementation details, including which alerts should have multilingual templates and the translations for those templates. Today’s Report and Order from the Bureau incorporates that feedback and presents the templates for the most common and time-sensitive alerts, such as hurricane, tornado, and earthquake warnings, in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.
For further details on today’s action, please see: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-implementation-requirements-multilingual-wea-templates.
