National Weather Service translations to non-English speakers to resume Monday

Potentially life-saving weather information will once again reach a broader audience as the weather service reinstates its contract for translating weather products.

WASHINGTON — The National Weather Service plans to resume translations of its products for non-English speakers on Monday.

Translations of NWS products were paused earlier this month after a contract with an artificial intelligence company had lapsed. Experts had warned that the pause in translations put many non-English speakers at risk of missing potentially life-saving warnings about extreme weather.

“The National Weather Service’s contract to produce common language translations for @NWS products has been reinstated ,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration social media page said on Thursday. “Translation capabilities are expected to be operational on or before the end of the day on Monday, April 28.”

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 came 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.

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.