According to recent Census data, the Hispanic or Latino population represents nearly 1 in 5 Americans today, where 71.1% of these individuals speak Spanish at home. Despite increased efforts among the weather enterprise, establishing effective risk communication strategies for Spanish-speaking populations has been an uphill battle. No frameworks exist for translating weather information into the Spanish language, nor are there collective solutions that address this problem within the weather world. The objective of this article is threefold. First, the current translation issue in Spanish is highlighted. Through research conducted at the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center, situations are revealed where regional varieties of Spanish contributed to inconsistent risk messaging across the bilingual weather community. Second, existing resources are featured so that interested readers are aware of ongoing efforts to translate weather information into Spanish. Organizations within the weather service, like the NWS Multimedia Assistance in Spanish Team and the NWS Spanish Outreach Team, are highlighted for their pioneer work on Spanish weather communication. Last, a framework for translation standardization in the atmospheric sciences is introduced, along with future initiatives that are being sought by NWS and AMS to enhance Spanish hazardous weather communication.
Spanish-speaking populations in the U.S. are more vulnerable in disaster contexts due to inequities, such as language barriers, that prevent them from receiving life-saving information. For the past couple of decades, governmental organizations have addressed these issues by translating weather watches, warnings, and advisories into Spanish. Previous studies suggest that these Spanish translations do not communicate the same level of urgency as their English counterparts. To identify whether these translated products result in inequities between English and Spanish speaker reception and comprehension of forecast information, we asked a representative sample of U.S. English (n=1,550) and Spanish (n=1,050) speakers to correctly identify the translations of weather watches and warnings and found significant language inequities. Additionally, we asked U.S. Spanish speakers to indicate the urgency they felt when shown different Spanish words used in weather watch and warning translations. When presented with various translations for watch and warning terminology, respondents consistently rated aviso, the current translation of warning by the NWS and FEMA, as less urgent than many other alternatives. To increase the effectiveness of severe weather messaging in multilingual contexts, translations should take into consideration factors such as culture and dialects of Spanish speakers in the U.S. and focus on translating the meaning, not the words, of key risk statements in weather products. We recommend vigilancia for “watch” and alerta for “warning” as research-supported terminologies to communicate urgency in Spanish.
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