‘Life or death situation': UI researcher reacts to NWS pause in forecast translations
URBANA, Ill. (WCIA) — The National Weather Service (NWS) is pausing forecast translations for non-English speakers after a contract with the provider ended. Now, some experts consider this a 'life or death' situation.
Joseph Trujillo-Falcón, researcher and faculty member with U of I's Department of Climate, Meteorology, and Atmospheric Sciences, studies the impacts of what happens if people don't have accessible alerts in a language they speak.
'We found that the forecasts could be as accurate as could be, we could give a heads up in advance, but it's the fact people don't understand it in a language they understand,' he said.
Now, the pause in forecast translations isn't helping to fill that gap; and Trujillo-Falcón is worried the 68 million people in the U.S. who speak another language won't have proper information to make informed decisions.
The NWS used to translate manually, but said the workflow was 'labor intensive and not sustainable.' Trujillo-Falcón said it would sometimes take an hour to translate from English to Spanish.
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'These automated programs, however, have reduced the translation time from an hour to two to three minutes,' he explained. 'When we think about tornadoes, they can happen from one moment to another. That can be the difference between life and death.'
NWS partnered with Lilt, an AI company, in 2023 but the contract has since ended. But, that's not stopping Trujillo-Falcón.
He has a Facebook page dedicated to spreading watches and warnings in Spanish.
'People have been thankful, especially with the most recent events with the sirens going off time and time again. They were able to make sense of it and make proper decisions,' he said.
WCIA Weather Now
He's proud of the work his team is doing and wants to continue helping non-English speakers get access to weather forecasts they understand.
'We can come from various backgrounds, believe in various different things,' Trujillo-Falcón said. 'I'm just a fond believer that no matter where you come from, no matter how you're raised, you deserve to have a chance at life-saving information during natural disasters.'
He leads the Advancing Language Equity and Resilience in the Atmospheric Sciences lab on the U of I campus. It's dedicated to improving communication efforts for weather and climate events.
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