Spanish Language Earthquake Resources Yield U.S. and International Impacts

The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) offers many of its education and outreach products in both English and Spanish. Products include earthquake lists and maps, recent earthquake teachable moments, seismic data apps, posters and fact sheets, plus regional and concept animations. These products serve two audiences that have discovered these resources via the internet; a growing Spanish-speaking population in the United States (U.S.), and an international Spanish speaking community. Demand for Spanish earthquake resources, from both within the U.S. and abroad, is evidenced by the high traffic these resources record. For example, the most popular Spanish language animation received more than 222,000 unique views over its five-year lifetime.

IRIS began creating bilingual resources more than 15 years ago by creating a website listing the most recent earthquakes in Spanish. As the popularity of the list grew, extensive improvements were made to the original page. The international discoverability of our resources was an important part of our strategy to increase impact. For example, as awareness of the Spanish version of our Seismic Monitor has grown, the usage has increased from roughly 300 daily unique page views in spring 2014 to an average of more than 5,000 unique views per day in 2018. And, when a large earthquake occurs in a Spanish-speaking region of the world, these pages can reach nearly 50,000 unique views daily.

Providing Spanish language resources can be achieved through minimal extra investment of time or money by planning for this audience from the outset. For example, new software development is designed to include a language file to make multilingual use easier. Animations can be developed so that the script can be easily translated and the on-screen text built in layers that is easily adapted.

Spanish-language communities around the world, many of which are affected by geohazards, are consumers of these bilingual resources. Visitors from primarily Spanish speaking countries now outnumber U.S. based visitors to our website. Thus, IRIS's small efforts to extend the accessibility and reach of our projects is resulting in rewarding international impacts.