Seminole County emergency management is using Text to 911 translation to lessen language barriers for the thousands of residents there who don’t speak English well.
The feature has been in place for three months. It allows people to text 911 in their native language – with real-time, automatic translation interpreting the message in English for the dispatcher. The service then translates the English response, as well.
About 24% of Seminole County residents speak a language other than English at home, according to a January 2024 report from the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research. Of those non-English speakers, only 16.6% speak English “very well.”
It's more than 95,000 county residents based on 2023 population estimates.
County Emergency Manager Alan Harris said the launch of a text translation tool had been on the department’s radar for years. Harris said two of the biggest drivers were the influx of Puerto Ricans after 2017’s Hurricane Maria and the arrival of Haitian migrants who sought to flee gang activity in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince.
Sixty-four of Florida’s 67 counties use Text to 911, according to the Florida Department of Management Services, but the translation feature is not yet widely used.
Harris said it is vital to ensure any technology added to a 911 network operates as intended. The dispatchers have been trained to recognize obvious mistranslations – and other hiccups – if they should happen, he said. “Call takers are trained to ask multiple questions to make sure that the correct information is being provided.”
He said they’ve done a lot of testing with different languages, and all of them are “working effectively.”
With training and testing, the translation tool has been approved for 35 languages, but Harris said Spanish, Creole and Mandarin are the ones most commonly encountered.
Dispatchers are trained to handle text messages “just like a voice call.” Workers have the option to respond to texts with pre-written options or a custom answer.
The pre-written responses range from: “What address to send help?” to “Stay calm, help is on the way.”
Dispatcher Ashlynn Wise, 21, said she welcomes the alternative for non-English speakers to reach the Emergency Communication Center.
“Being somebody who doesn’t know other languages – it can be hard to differentiate some,” Wise said.
If a non-English speaker simply calls 911, the traditional translation method involves bringing in a third-party operator who can act as a translator. Wise said making that connection takes 30 to 45 seconds on “a good day” without heavy call volume.
“In an emergency, 30 seconds can feel like forever,” she said.
Translation is faster, but something of the human connection is lost in communicating through text.
When somebody who does not speak English calls, Wise said she still tells them to breathe, calm down and that help is on the way.
Dead air is not a friend to a 911 dispatcher.
But text messages are built on quick responses that need no actual voice. On both ends of the messages, texting can create a feeling of unease and uncertainty.
Wise said the message can be delivered with less of a delay, but the lack of a voice makes it so the severity of an emergency is harder to gauge. The frantic, concerned panting that may come through on an emergency call is reduced to text translated out of its original language.
“You don’t get a great judge of what exactly is going on,” she said.
Attempts to curb language barriers in Seminole County’s emergency communications are still evolving.
Harris said he would personally like to see the county add video-to-911 calls. Then it would be a lot easier to read the situation, even if callers don’t speak English.
Orange and Volusia counties have systems in place that allow residents to livestream video to dispatchers, but Seminole County has not adopted that technology made by Carbyne.
“I believe that in not too long, we’re going to see video to 911 and photographs to 911,” Harris said.
Despite the optimism for the present and future, the translation tool has seen little use.
Fire department emergency communications manager Keri Troyano said she could not give an exact number, but on the fire dispatch side of things, both Text to 911 and the translation feature haven’t seen much traction.
Part of the problem is messaging. The tool’s main demographic does not speak English, so letting people know about the texting possibilities would mean making announcements in all the languages provided.
Harris said it’s challenging to create that messaging and to know which social media outlets will result in the most views.
“We want to, of course, break down these barriers,” he said.
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