New York Attorney General Letitia James joined with 16 attorneys general from other states and New York City in calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to expand language access for critical government alerts sent to cell phones, known as Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs).
In a comment letter, the coalition acknowledges the important steps FCC has taken to expand access to Wireless Emergency Alerts but notes that this proposal would require wireless companies to use machine translation rather than human translation for WEAs and would only include translations for 13 languages. Following multiple severe weather emergencies in New York and across the country, Attorney General James and the coalition urge FCC to adopt its alternative proposal to use human translators, which are far more reliable, instead of machine translation, and to increase the number of available languages from 13 to at least 25.
During severe weather emergencies, current and accurate information can be critical to survival. Even a slim chance of error in translation could have severe consequences. Instead, the Attorneys General contend the coalition endorses the FCC’s alternative approach of using alert templates for various emergency situations. Those templates would be created by humans, pre-installed on cell phones, and activated when an English-language WEA is received by phone.
“In just the last few weeks, New Yorkers have been hammered by violent storms, flash flooding, and extreme heat, and receiving Wireless Emergency Alerts during these emergencies can be the difference between life and death,” said Attorney General James. “The next severe weather event is a matter of when, not if. It is critical that this potentially lifesaving information be transmitted to the millions of New Yorkers — and Americans nationwide — who are not proficient in English. I applaud the steps FCC has taken thus far and urge them to expand language access even further to ensure no one is left behind.”
The FCC proposes the use of machine translation applications on cell phones that would translate English WEAs to a user’s preferred language without any review by human translators. However, machine translations are not always reliable. A recent joint study by UCLA and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center found that the accuracy rate of machine translations from English varied widely for different languages — from 94 percent accuracy to as low as 55 percent accuracy.
If FCC moves forward with its proposal to include only 13 languages, immigrant communities in New York and nationwide with high rates of Limited English Proficiency (LEP) would be excluded from WEAs. To reach more of these communities now and in the future, Attorney General James and the coalition recommend that WEAs be supported in all languages spoken by at least 300,000 people in the U.S. over five years old — a total of more than 25 non-English languages. The coalition also urges FCC to consider adding additional languages every few years based on the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data on spoken languages and LEP rates.
Joining Attorney General James in filing these comments are the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the City of New York.
