[EAS] NPT at KKNU

[Ed Czarnecki]

Whether or not state/county CAP originators expand support for languages ...
well, that will be a state and local decision, in concert with their
suppliers.  My personal view is that the choice of whether or not a
particular station should uses any language (or more than one language)
should be left to that station.  And I have not heard any differing
viewpoint from any responsible Federal agency.  Stations know their
audiences. 

As for FEMA, they are expanding UTF support to the IPAWS OPEN system, so it
is feasible that originators will provide messages in any number of
languages and character sets.  The increase in size in the XML CAP message
is not really that burdensome.  But FEMA is just the pass-through for this
content (except for national messaging).  Originating multilingual is a
local decision.  And processing multilingual by EAS Participants should be
an individual decision, IMHO.

I would have to characterize that CSRIC report as an uneasy compromise, and
hardly a perfect work product. So, this report, though imperfect, is at best
a rough starting point.  And hopefully one that will be revisited with a
broader range of impartial contributors.

The Minnesota case study was aggressively edited out, and many contrary
views were removed.  If you recall, I withdrew an entire proposed section
due to opposition form one or two vocal interests, even though it accurately
reflected the actual capabilities of the FEMA CAP originator and the systems
in place in a large number of states and EAS Participants.

In Minnesota, we supplied an originator into Minnesota that enables English,
Spanish, French, Hmong and Somali.  Are broadcasters carrying these
languages?  By and large, no, not by stations that know their listening
audience are by and large English speaking.  But some stations can and are.
And a number of stations were upgraded to handle all of these languages -
including TTS conversion in those same languages, plus transliteration
support for EAS messaging.  Twin Cities Public Television is working on a
number of pretty interesting initiatives to provide emergency messaging to
local groups in their primary languages.

A large part of the project - one to which TPT can attest - was the
development of an emergency management lexicon.  There is no direct
translation - for example - for the term "shelter in place,"  and no set
word for "tornado" in either language.  So, working with social scientists
and community outreach, TPT Echo did a tremendous job in adding to the body
of knowledge here - and with outreach to these communities throughout the
state.

I do not believe there is necessarily only one answer to the multilingual
challenge - this is the epitome of  a local issue.  And I do agree with the
hope that various approaches can find their niche without regulation
affecting innovation.  

I have been disappointed to date, however, in the level of special and
competitive interests that have actually stifled innovation in this area
already.