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Shake map of the July 29 Chino Hills earthquake

News: L.A. Unprepared, Online Chat Interpreter

Language mix could spell trouble in an earthquake, company offers instant translator for Internet chat

Report: Too Few Multilingual Emergency Workers, Materials

Written materials about preparing for disasters such as earthquakes and wildfires are not available widely enough in languages other than English, and the number of multilingual staff members and volunteers at emergency response organizations is insufficient, according to a report (pdf) released on July 9, 2008, by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute. Moreover, ethnic media outlets are not communicating important messages about disaster preparedness in minority communities. The report, "Disaster Preparedness in Urban Immigrant Communities: Lessons Learned from Recent Catastrophic Events and Their Relevance to Latino and Asian Communities in Southern California," recommends that federal and state governments cooperate to establish an emergency planning system that provides secondary language assistance. Governments should also address some immigrants' wariness about coming forward for fear of having their status questioned, the report said. —Maggie Liu

Instant Messaging Across Languages Still Not Easy

Telestic Inc., an L.A.-based communications company, has created a free instant messaging application, MeGlobe, that translates in real time between 14 languages. MeGlobe is now available after a test run this summer. The languages covered are Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Russian, Dutch, Greek, Korean, Arabic, Swedish, Chinese (both traditional and simplified characters), French (French and Canadian), and English (American, UK, Australian, and Canadian).  In LALA’s test of Spanish-English conversation, simple phrases came out garbled, and the interface didn’t provide the characters and accents that mark the difference between, for example, sí (yes) and si (if). Abbreviations common in IM (e.g. LOL) generally came through unaltered. —Ani Mazmanian

Date Posted: 9/3/2008