[EAS] Multilingual support for CAP messages

[Dave Turnmire]

Many thanks to Harold and Ed for their providing input regarding their 
equipment and other insight.  And to the others who have commented.  One 
never knows whether a question here will elicit a yawn or a lively response!

Unless I have missed something (quite possible!), this discussion has 
focused a lot on the EAS box and choices by the broadcaster (and cable 
companies, etc).  The other part if this equation, of course, is how the 
additional languages get _originated_.    The upside for my state and 
some others is our CAP origination vendor provides TTS at the 
origination end, which provides us a much better result (IMHO), than 
relying on the TTS in the decoders.  But... at present... they don't 
provide multilingual origination support in any form.  Reportedly they 
are working on developing that.

But having support for multiple language (text and audio) within the CAP 
message is only one part of the solution.  Someone... generally 
emergency management... provides that initial text (and often audio).  
For some of us, we are fortunate enough (in this specific regard), to 
only have a couple languages to deal with.  But... to my knowledge (I'll 
learn more in a couple weeks), the dispatchers that generate the EAS 
messages aren't required to be bilingual.  And EAS by nature is issued 
in a short time frame, so if you don't have the ability in-house at that 
moment... it is too late.  If they are bilingual, that fixes that 
particular problem.

But... what of the situation that some of you have described where you 
have dozens... or more... languages in your community?  Even if for the 
sake of argument the dispatcher involved knows dozens of languages... 
and your CAP origination equipment supports that... how long will it 
take to type the text for dozens of languages... to say nothing of 
prepare all those audio files (even if the origination software supports 
TTS)?  Will the emergency be over before you type all of that?  A 
downstream station can't "choose" a "primary" language... if it isn't in 
the CAP message to begin with.

So, to my thinking, the only way emergency management can deal with this 
is CAP origination software that can not only handle multiple languages 
in an alert and  TTS for each language of interest... but they also need 
an automated translation from English to multiple languages.  And it has 
to be high enough quality to be worthwhile. Or, alternatively, have 
ready access to text translation software that can rapidly and 
accurately create the correct text and allow them to cutNpaste it into 
their CAP origination software and rely on TTS to do the audio.  But the 
cutNpaste technique doesn't scale very well if you have more than two or 
three languages your jurisdiction needs to support.

So... any insight on how this gets done realistically at the origination 
end... with currently available technology/products?

Dave