[EAS] Multilingual support for CAP messages

[Sean Donelan]

On Mon, 28 Mar 2016, Rod Zeigler wrote:
> WEA is MUCH better suited to the various languages, and phones capable
> of WEA are ubiquitous in these populations.

WEA uses cell broadcast, which is much like other types of broadcast.  It 
does not send a unique, customized WEA message to individual phones.  WEA 
sends a single (ok, repeated, but single) common cell broadcast message to 
all phones in range on a tower's control frequency.  Sending multiple 
languages would require multiple broadcast messages.  The language 
translation is not done by the cell phone.

The cell industry wanted their own rules because they were afraid of
people in other industries that didn't understand the technology trying
to force them to do immpossible things.

In theory, Digital TV and Digital Radio broadcasters could also send 
different languages through ancillary data streams, and "smart TVs" and
"smart radios" could do the right thing.  MVPD systems may have
50 different languages, but generally an individual channel only has
one primary language and maybe a secondary language based on the audience 
for that channel.

If you look at things from the point of view of the audience, not the 
broadcaster, its a bit simplier.  Pick the primary language of the 
audience, and SAP if you use it, on that channel.  You don't need 50
languages on every channel.  In reality, the government agencies 
originating the alerts won't send more than a few languages at most.