The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created templates to enable wireless emergency alerts on mobile devices to be displayed in a greater number of languages, after receiving public feedback on the issue.

The agency created templates for the 18 mostly commonly issued and time-sensitive alerts across the 13 prevalent languages in the US, plus English and American Sign Language (ASL).

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the FCC are the primary federal agencies responsible for the wireless emergency alerts (WEA) system.

Public safety officials will have the option to use the customisable template alerts to warn communities about life-threatening emergencies.

Outgoing FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel stated the multilingual alerts “will make it so officials can reach more people with urgent messages and save lives”.

In October 2023, the FCC adopted rules that allow alert creators to send common alerts in more than a dozen languages without needing a translator.

The rules require wireless providers participating in WEA to install and store the FCC’s alert templates on mobile devices.

When an alert initiator sends a template-based multilingual alert, the phone will display the correct template in the subscriber’s default language, if available. Otherwise, the phone shows it in English. 

In February 2024, under the direction of the FCC, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau sought public comment on implementation details, including which alerts should have multilingual templates and correct translations for those templates. 

The report and order from the Bureau used that feedback to create the most common and time-sensitive alerts for events such as hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes.

Languages covered are Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.