Breaking Through Barriers: NWS AI Translation Services and Multilingual Weather Content for Underserved Communities

In recent years, there have been increased calls for government entities including the National Weather Service (NWS) to better serve non-English speaking communities. The 2021 Hurricane Ida NWS Service Assessment “represents the first time NWS has reviewed service delivery formally through the lenses of equity and underserved communities.” A finding from this assessment revealed that the “NWS has no current capacity for the multitude of other languages spoken by residents or visitors to the U.S. and only limited capabilities to address communities with disabilities that limit communications.” The NWS AI Language Translation Team aims to change this limitation within NWS by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to scale language translation services across the NWS enterprise. This presentation will discuss updated service offerings from the AI Translation Team, including enhanced features of the experimental NWS Translate website (weather.gov/translate) that can be used by partners and all NWS offices nationwide. In addition, examples of the use and promotion of translated content by our team and pilot offices will be highlighted, revealing outreach lessons learned from making AI translated content available in a multicultural world.