Watchdog says US weather alerts are getting lost in translation

US spending watchdogs have called on the National Weather Service (NWS) to deliver an updated plan for its AI language translation project to reduce the risk posed by extreme weather events to people not proficient in English.

The call from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) comes as vast swathes of the US are pinned down by a winter storm that has already claimed lives.

But the NWS AI translation effort has been caught between a drive to reach as many people as possible, administration changes, and a White House Executive order to cement the role of English as the country's official language.

The GAO report [PDF] noted that 26 million people in the US have "limited ability to read, speak, write, or understand English." Two-thirds of people with limited English speak Spanish, while other major languages include Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Tagalog. French rounds out the top ten.

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