Overview

• The National Weather Service will restart translating weather alerts and forecasts into Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Samoan by Monday, April 28, 2025.
• Translations paused earlier this month due to a lapse in the agency's contract with Lilt, an artificial intelligence translation provider.
• Experts warned that the suspension of multilingual alerts could endanger non-English-speaking communities during severe weather events.
• Nearly 68 million U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home, emphasizing the critical need for linguistic accessibility in public safety communications.
• The lapse and reinstatement highlight broader challenges tied to federal budget constraints and administrative management within NOAA, NWS's parent agency.