Designing a Machine Translation System for Canadian Weather ...

Designing a Weather Warning Translation System 4
Fig. 1. A sample weather warning as it appeared on Environment Canada’s website in
November 2011.
Fig. 1 shows an example of a strong wind warning issued on 22 November 2011, as
it appeared on EC’s website. A short header identifies the affected area, followed by
a discussion explaining the threat. A French version of every warning is available, in
the same format. That version is accessed by clicking on the “Français” link in the
upper left corner of the page. There are different kinds of warnings, depending on
the threat reported. For instance, WU bulletins describe severe thunderstorms, WF
bulletins warn about the formation of tornadoes, and WW bulletins are “omnibus”
bulletins most often compiling warnings currently in effect.
3.2 Lifecycle of Warnings
The broadcast of the warning shown in Fig. 1 is in fact one of the end results of
an intricate dissemination system. First, a warning is composed by a meteorologist,
based on the available weather data for a specific region. The warning is issued
from one of numerous emitting stations spread over Canada, and is written in English,
except when it originates from the French-speaking province of Quebec. The