The National Weather Service in the United States has stopped translating its content, a change that, according to experts, could put non-English speakers at risk of missing out on warnings about extreme weather that could save their lives.
The weather service has “paused” translations because its contract with the artificial intelligence company Lilt has expired, said agency spokesperson Michael Musher, who refused to provide further details.
Lilt began providing translations in late 2023 to replace the manual translations that, according to the service, were laborious and unsustainable. The company eventually made content available in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Samoan. The contract expired at a time when the government of President Donald Trump was seeking to cut expenses in federal agencies, including cuts within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States (NOAA), which have resulted in high vacancy rates in the offices of the National Weather Service (NWS).
NOAA referred all questions related to Lilt to a message on their website announcing that the contract had ended. Lilt did not respond to requests for comments.
Nearly 68 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, including 42 million Spanish speakers, according to 2019 census data.
Not being able to read urgent weather alerts could be a matter of life or death, said Joseph Trujillo Falcón, a researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus, who has worked with NOAA on research for translating weather and climate information to the public, including the use of artificial intelligence.
He said that the translation of weather alerts saved lives during a series of tornadoes in Kentucky in 2021. A Spanish-speaking family pointed out that initially they received a tornado alert in English on their phone, which they ignored because they didn’t understand it. When that same alert arrived in Spanish, they sought shelter immediately.
“Trujillo Falcón stated, ‘He saved their lives.‘”
Trujillo Falcón pointed out that previously meteorological alerts used to be translated by meteorologists who spoke more than one language, a task that could be “completely overwhelming” and added to their workload as meteorologists.
Translations are important for more than just extreme weather events, said Andrew Kruczkiewicz, a researcher in the Meteorology faculty at Columbia University. General weather forecasts are essential for various sectors, including tourism, transportation, and energy. Families and businesses can make more informed decisions when they can access weather information that often includes actions to be taken based on the forecast.
Norma Mendoza-Denton, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles campus, said that there are many people in the United States who go through life with limited English. For example, a shopkeeper might be able to engage in small talk with customers, but may not have the same level of understanding when it comes to reading meteorological or climatic terms.
“If they don’t have access to that information from the National Meteorological Service in different languages, that could be the difference between life and death for someone,” Mendoza-Denton pointed out.