National Weather Service no longer translating products for non-English speakers

(AP) – The National Weather Service is no longer providing language translations of its products, a change that experts say could put non-English speakers at risk of missing potentially life-saving warnings about extreme weather.

The weather service has “paused” the translations because its contract with the provider has lapsed, NWS spokesperson Michael Musher said. He declined further comment.

Lilt, an artificial intelligence company, began providing translations in late 2023, replacing manual translations that the weather service had said were labor-intensive and not sustainable. It eventually provided them in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Samoan. The contract lapse comes as President Donald Trump's administration is seeking to slash spending in federal agencies, including cuts within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that have led to high employee vacancy rates at NWS offices.

NOAA referred questions about the contract to a message on its website announcing the contract had lapsed. Lilt did not respond to requests for comment.

Nearly 68 million people in the U.S. 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 who has worked with NOAA researching how to translate weather and climate information to the public, including the use of artificial intelligence.

He said translated weather alerts saved lives during a deadly tornado outbreak in Kentucky in 2021. A Spanish-speaking family interviewed afterward said they got a tornado alert on their cellphone in English but ignored it because they didn't understand it, he said. When the same alert came in Spanish, they quickly sought shelter, he said.

“It saved their life,” said Trujillo-Falcón.

Trujillo-Falcón said weather alerts used to be translated by forecasters that spoke more than one language, a task that could be “completely overwhelming” on top of their forecasting duties.

The translations are important for more than extreme weather events, said Andrew Kruczkiewicz, a senior researcher at the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University. General weather forecasts are essential for a number of sectors including tourism, transportation and energy. Families and businesses can make more informed decisions when they can get weather information that often includes actions that should be taken based on the forecast.

Norma Mendoza-Denton, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said there are many people in the U.S. that function with limited English relevant to their daily routines. For example, a shopkeeper might be able to have short conversations with customers, but might not have the same understanding when it comes to reading weather or climate terminologies.

“If they don’t have access to that National Weather Service information in the different languages, that could be the difference between life and death for somebody,” said Mendoza-Denton.