Notify NYC – the city’s free, official source for information about emergency events and important city services – has expanded to offer common notifications in 13 languages, including Yiddish, as well as American Sign Language and audio formats.
“The best way to learn about emergencies – the city’s Notify NYC program – just got better with the ability to reach New Yorkers who speak languages other than English,” NYC Emergency Management Commissioner Joseph Esposito said in a statement on Monday. “In an emergency, getting up-to-date and accurate information to New Yorkers is critical. The new multilingual messages will help more New Yorkers to stay safe and informed.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 29% of New Yorkers speak a language other than English at home, the Mayor’s Press Office said in a statement. To provide important information to even more New Yorkers, pre-scripted translations of Notify NYC messages will now be available in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Italian, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Urdu and Yiddish.
Since its inception as a pilot program in December 2007, Notify NYC says it has sent out more than 6,500 notifications about local emergencies; today, more than 380,000 New Yorkers receive alert notifications from Notify NYC. New Yorkers can sign up for emergency alerts by visiting the Notify NYC website, NYC.gov/notifynyc or by calling 311.
Subscribers can receive alerts in seven ways: phone, email, SMS, fax, BlackBerry PIN, Instant Messenger, and Twitter. Non-English speaking subscribers who receive any of the above digital formats will be given an option to follow a link in which the same message is listed in 13 different languages, audio format, and ASL, according to the press release by the Mayor’s Press Office.
Sefer Pele Yoetz, Perek Cetibah [writing], paragraph 1 of 3:
ReplyDelete“An unmotivated person who has not learned the skill of writing correctly in Hebrew and in the local language, he will be covered with shame and disgrace.”
CHRONOLOGY: Rabbi Eliezer Papo lived from 1785 CE to 1826 CE.