Enhancing U.S. National Resilience Through Multilingual Emergency Communication: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of Translation Governance

The United States is increasingly shaped by linguistic diversity and dependence on digital public communication, particularly during emergencies. In this environment, public resilience depends not only on the existence of emergency communication systems, but on their ability to deliver clear, credible, and actionable messages to multilingual populations, including residents with limited English proficiency. Recent federal data and policy guidance show that multilingual communication is no longer a peripheral inclusion issue; it is integral to equitable service access, public safety, and institutional effectiveness. Yet research remains fragmented across language access, translation technology, and emergency alerting, with limited integrative evidence on how translation governance affects comprehension, trust, and actionability in the U.S. emergency context. This study addresses that gap through an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design evaluating three communication conditions: human translation, AI-assisted translation with human review, and minimally reviewed machine translation. The study combines AI platform outputs, pre- and post-comprehension tests, structured perception measures, and semi-structured interviews analyzed through NVivo. Quantitative analysis employs t-tests, ANOVA, and chi-square procedures, while qualitative analysis examines participants’ perceptions of clarity, trust, procedural understanding, and communicative fit. The findings show a consistent hierarchy: human translation produces the strongest comprehension and action-guiding outcomes; AI-assisted translation with human review offers a workable but not fully equivalent alternative; and minimally reviewed machine translation performs least reliably in high-stakes settings. The study argues that multilingual emergency communication should be understood as a governance issue rather than a matter of linguistic transfer alone. It concludes that effective resilience in a multilingual America depends not only on technological capacity, but on whether emergency messages can be understood, trusted, and acted upon across linguistic communities.