Radio eas in Spanish is it worth it in LA?

[30james]

Just wondering here is the article on it.

FCC Advances Multilingual Alert Proposal. ‘We Can Save More Lives,’ Says Chair Jessica Rosenworcel.

A proposal designed to bring multilingual emergency alerts to radio and television has advanced at the Federal Communications Commission, which voted unanimously Thursday to move forward with a rulemaking that

www.insideradio.com

 

[MassMusicMan]

"Is something in the Spanish language worth it in Los Angeles?"

I think your answer is in the question, fella.

 

[davideduardo]

I believe that EAS messages should be in the language of the station or program in which they occur. But an English language station should not be told to run messages in a language which listeners probably do not understand; that will be more confusing and cause many people to ignore them totally!

 

[Yabadabado1]

I believe that EAS messages should be in the language of the station or program in which they occur. But an English language station should not be told to run messages in a language which listeners probably do not understand; that will be more confusing and cause many people to ignore them totally!

Broadcasting EAS warnings in a 2nd language could open a Pandora's Box of issues. How long till those speaking Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, etc. demand that EAS messages be done in THEIR language also? You could end up having an EAS announcement that last 20 minutes.

 

[davideduardo]

Broadcasting EAS warnings in a 2nd language could open a Pandora's Box of issues. How long till those speaking Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, etc. demand that EAS messages be done in THEIR language also? You could end up having an EAS announcement that last 20 minutes.

The only reasonable policy would be "in the language of the broadcast at the time of the EAS alert or test". There is a tacit assumption that the vast, overwhelming majority of listeners to a station understand the language it is broadcasting in. There is also an understanding that most of those listeners will not be fluent in any other language being used.

This is not like an international airport where there may be many people of different nations and cultures all passing through. It is about a radio station where listeners will generally be at least moderately knowledgeable of the language the station employs.

My feeling, based on many decades of dealing with listeners of different languages and cultures is that adding EAS notices in a second or third or more languages will create both more confusion and cause many to simply ignore all such multi-lingual announcements altogether. It's what I call the "Tower of Babel" syndrome where nobody understands anyone else.

 

[radiofan2023]

More like “Tower of babble”

 

[Identnut]

I believe that EAS messages should be in the language of the station or program in which they occur. But an English language station should not be told to run messages in a language which listeners probably do not understand; that will be more confusing and cause many people to ignore them totally!

EAS messages are given in Spanish and English in Puerto Rico. Many Puerto Ricans may not understand the English part, but its mere presence sends the message "this is from the American government and so this is the real deal".

 

[RadioGuy1864]

I think the EAS should be in English and the language being broadcast at the time the EAS is issued. Many brokered ethnic stations broadcast in more than 1 language, so English and the particular language makes sense. EAS in 11 languages is insane.

 

[kevtronics]

Since most EAS alerts are generated by automated text-to-speech voices, and contain a limited vocabulary of local place names and possible scenarios (tornado, flood, wildfire, nuclear bomb, etc.) it should be easy to set up a system to automatically generate translations as needed.

 

[davideduardo]

EAS messages are given in Spanish and English in Puerto Rico. Many Puerto Ricans may not understand the English part, but its mere presence sends the message "this is from the American government and so this is the real deal".

Is the bilingual EAS a requirement? Back several decades when I was managing stations there, we did EBS and, later, EAS tests in Spanish only. I do not recall what languages(s) other stations did them in.

 

[davideduardo]

Since most EAS alerts are generated by automated text-to-speech voices, and contain a limited vocabulary of local place names and possible scenarios (tornado, flood, wildfire, nuclear bomb, etc.) it should be easy to set up a system to automatically generate translations as needed.

For Spanish that will require a bit of “localization” as there are some terms used in Caribbean Spanish that are different in Mexican Spanish.

 

[Yabadabado1]

This is sorta related but TV oriented. I remember years ago when TV ran the EAS you'd get the annoying screech at the beginning and then "This is a test...blah, blah, blah". Lately though I've seen the scroll pop up on the screen [of several stations, not just one specific one] with nary a screech, beep, horn etc and NO announcement of "this is a test". Have things changed where they no longer have to have audio? They do sometimes drop off the audio of the program playing till the scroll is over.

 

[Michi]

Of course, the elephant in the room that the FCC and FEMA appear to be in denial on is the fact that the National Weather Service does not send alerts through IPAWS and in most places, a majority of the alerts received are from NWS. For those of us who live in storm and tornado country, the alerts that come through are very localized. Alerts that are sent over legacy EAS have no opportunity to be "translated" and only show to the county level. It is useless to send a tornado warning without saying where it is going to take place, especially in the case of counties with large land areas. I am hoping that Sage and Digital Alert Systems comes back and says this is going to be a massive undertaking on their part, especially if there's any thoughts of supporting multi-lingual text to speech and having to equip EAS units with all of those dictionaries (I can't wait to see them try to handle Chinese) and for TV stations all of those new font types (e.g. Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, etc.) and finding freeware fonts that are actually readable on the air... all for functionality that a large number of stations will not need to use. I think this is going to be a huge burden on the EAS developers, which would likely get passed to broadcasters in increased software upgrade costs.

 

[Michi]

This is sorta related but TV oriented. I remember years ago when TV ran the EAS you'd get the annoying screech at the beginning and then "This is a test...blah, blah, blah". Lately though I've seen the scroll pop up on the screen [of several stations, not just one specific one] with nary a screech, beep, horn etc and NO announcement of "this is a test". Have things changed where they no longer have to have audio? They do sometimes drop off the audio of the program playing till the scroll is over.

Sounds like a Required Weekly Test (RWT).

 

[Yabadabado1]

Sounds like a Required Weekly Test (RWT).

Yes, but even so, in the past, you had the robot voice-over basically reading what was going across the screen. That seems to have stopped completely.