FEMA Cautions FCC on ‘Limitations’ of Text-to-Speech Multilingual EAS Alerts
The Federal Emergency Management Agency weighed in on an FCC public notice (CD March 13 p10) asking whether the commission should make broadcasters switch to a “designated hitter” system to send emergency alert system (EAS) messages in languages other than English when the foreign-language station is off-air. A one-paragraph FEMA comment posted Wednesday in docket 04-296, 26 days before initial responses are due to the Public Safety Bureau request (CD March 31 p15), backed the Minority Media and Telecommunication Council’s work to extend EAS warnings to those who don’t speak English. FEMA cautioned that using text-to-speech (TTS) technology to send such non-English warnings of bad weather, natural disasters and other events has “limitations.” A designated hitter approach would have stations in the same market of one that’s off-air distribute alerts in the language used by the knocked-out broadcaster.
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FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) is used by some federal and state government emergency and weather operations to originate EAS alerts that the agency then distributes online to all EAS participants that include all U.S. stations and multichannel video programming distributors. “The US IPAWS Common Alerting Protocol Profile specifically includes specified means and methods to propagate alert information received with multiple language versions to privately held broadcast, cable and commercial mobile service providers for delivery to members of the public using their systems,” commented FEMA in FCC docket 04-296 (http://bit.ly/1k4H5kx). Alerting authorities can send alerts in any language they prefer and “should understand that some EAS encoder/decoder products may have limitations” in TTS conversion in languages other than English, said FEMA. It had no comment for this story.
Those backing MMTC’s designated-hitter approach and those opposed to it agreed in interviews Thursday that TTS isn’t the best approach for multilingual alerts. Broadcasters generally oppose such a requirement, saying multilingual alerts may have a place in some circumstances, while MMTC and some allies say the FCC is long overdue in acting on the group’s 2005 designated-hitter petition. Stakeholders from both sides say the spoken voice is the best way to alert radio listeners and TV viewers of emergencies, and TTS can’t be used to translate a warning in one language into another to be broadcast. A Public Safety Bureau spokeswoman had no comment for this story.
It’s not readily possible now to use TTS to translate a written alert in one language to be broadcast in another with a very high degree of accuracy, let alone to do so in the same language with 100 percent success, said the president of a maker of EAS gear for broadcasters and others. Harold Price said his company, Sage Alerting Systems, can automatically do English, French and Spanish TTS within the same language, and can do others with additional cost and technology. “What we don’t do is translation from one language to another,” he said. Even for the same language, TTS “is never going to work as good as a human speaker who speaks in the vernacular and the dialect of the local audience,” said Price. Questions abound about, for instance, whether 911 should be read as “nine hundred eleven” or “9-1-1,” and such queries apply to many different uses of numbers and other nuances, said Price: A “stumbling speaker, even if he has mic fright,” is better than TTS, as long as audio quality is good.
FEMA is “saying that voice recognition technology isn’t the answer” for multilingual alerts, “which is what we've been saying for years,” said MMTC Executive Director David Honig. “There are things you need to hear from a real, live person.” FEMA’s comments, “very good news for our cause,” make the point that TTS isn’t “always reliable in an emergency,” said Honig. “This technology is in its infancy. It is not always accurate and it fails to convey nuances.” With the ninth hurricane season since Katrina knocked Spanish-language stations off-air starting later this year, “every day the FCC fails to act” on MMTC’s designated-hitter request “is shameful,” said Honig. Price said all EAS stakeholders should work on multilingual alerts “together to do this as best they can."
The United Church of Christ, which petitioned the FCC in 2005 for a designated hitter system along with MMTC and the now-defunct Independent Spanish Broadcasters Association, backs “non-English access to emergency information,” said Cheryl Leanza, policy adviser to the church. The National Hispanic Media Coalition, which didn’t take part in the original petition, would probably support any method that “is getting information out there” to Spanish- and other non-English speakers during emergencies, said NHMC Policy Director Michael Scurato. “Folks in these communities need emergency information.” There should be “an alternative means by which this information is getting out” to such communities, said Scurato. “That’s critical information that needs to be provided to these folks."
FEMA’s filing shows multilingual alerting isn’t an issue at that agency’s alert distribution-by-Internet system, but rather something for the FCC and broadcasters to work out, said EAS expert Suzanne Goucher. “FEMA raises a valid point that decisions about multilingual messaging must be made at the local level.” Each state and emergency situation “is different, and the particulars of whether an alert gets sent in more than one message is best left to the local alerting authorities to work out in cooperation with their local broadcasters,” said Goucher, CEO of the Maine Association of Broadcasters and chairwoman of that state’s Emergency Communications Committee. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this issue.”