Summer Institute Of Linguistics Inc

Programs: Language development and translation programs-- sil works with 2,000 ethnolinguistic minority communities around the world as they build their capacity for the sustainable development of their own languages. Language development is the series of ongoing planned actions that a language community takes to ensure that its language continues to serve its changing social, cultural, political, economic and spiritual needs and goals. Sil's expertise related to language development includes training and consulting for activities such as linguistic analysis, orthography and writing systems development, literature development (including translation) and multilingual education and literacy.

logistics -- sil serves minority language communities who may reside in very remote locations. It is often necessary for sil to provide services to its staff that are not available in the local economy, such as housing, transportation, and food.

training in language development and multilingual education-- sil offers technical expertise and training to support the decisions of local communities about how to maintain their cultures and use their languages in new ways to address their changing needs. To do this, sil assists with multilingual education programs to help students learn effectively through both their mother tongues and other languages. In addition to working with communities at the local level, sil is an acknowledged leader in formal academic programs for the components of cross-cultural language development work. Sil works in partnership with more than 25 institutions around the world to offer classroom and online training in applied linguistics.

materials development and publications -- sil works in partnership with minority language communities to develop new written and oral materials in their mother tongue. The kind of materials is determined by the community, and might include print, audio or video items. Content covers a variety of subjects such as primers, folk stories, textbooks, health and hygiene guidelines, games, history, etc. In addition to new materials, local workers are trained to adapt or translate literature from other languages on subjects such as nutrition, farming, health (including hiv/aids) and scripture texts. Sil also works with communities to foster the effective use of these materials.