[EAS] Multilingual support for CAP messages

[Harold Price]

At 01:34 PM 3/28/2016, Dave Turnmire wrote:
>  The other part if this equation, of course, is how the
>additional languages get _originated_.\

Dave,

Yes, this is the hard part, and is one that the FCC can't solve by itself.

I believe three things:

1) A real human voice, using local place pronunciations and 
interpretation of phone numbers, route numbers, dates, license 
plates, etc. is always better than TTS.  If human audio isn't 
available, a centralized TTS system, with some entity in charge of 
updating it, maintaining the lexicon and local place names, and 
enforcing or at least recommending syntax for originators use of 
capitalization, punctuation, abbreviations, etc., is better than what 
we have now.  Sage ENDECs have always had the ability for the user to 
add to the lexicon to modify pronunciations.

2) Machine language translation for emergencies is a long way from 
being good enough, especially when you are trying to keep the message 
short - there is little context for the human listener to make 
corrections - or for the software to disambiguate.

3) Holding an alert for everyone to wait for additional language 
translations for some is going to cause problems, as are other forms 
of waiting for a *possibly* better version of an alert.  Care must be 
taken here, to not delay the information, and to not release 
duplicate alerts in the EAS domain with different languages between the brapps.

Canada, because of their strong bilingual status, is bumping into 
problems on a national basis that we're still only addressing in 
pilot projects or in a small number of states down here.  One 
province already uses a centralized TTS system, and the national 
aggregator of CAP messages, similar to but not exactly analogous to 
IPAWS/FEMA, is in the process of implementing a national TTS system 
which would provide an audio file for stations to play.

They will also defining all the text formatting rules/guidelines/best 
practices.  Because of the difficulty of herding cats, and 
jurisdictional issues,  neither the FCC, FEMA, or EGIC tried to step 
into that area, other than limiting the total number of characters in 
messages and the length of the audio.  We need to keep an eye up 
north, and see how that all works out.  Sage has been an active 
CAP-CP participant in Canada since 2010.

I will note that many Canadian radio stations have no interest in 
playing both English *and* French in an alert, as their audience and 
programming is usually in either one or the other language.  The 
national network has a mandate to do both, however.

Harold