SIL International

History

William Cameron Townsend, a Presbyterian minister, founded the organization in 1934. In the early 1930s Townsend worked as a Disciples of Christ missionary among the Kaqchikel Maya people in Guatemala. In 1933 he turned to Mexico with the purpose of translating the Bible into indigenous languages there, as he had done for Kaqchikel. Townsend established a working relationship with the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education under the government of President Lázaro Cárdenas (in office 1934-1940) and founded SIL to educate linguist-missionaries to work in Mexico. Because the Mexican government did not allow missionary work through its educational system, Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1942 as a separate organization from SIL. Wycliffe Bible Translators focused on Bible translation and missionary activities whereas SIL focused on linguistic documentation and literacy education.

Having initiated the collaboration with the Mexican education authorities, Townsend started SIL International as a small summer training session in Sulphur Springs, Arkansas in 1934 to missionaries in basic linguistic, anthropological and translation principles. Through the following decades the SIL linguists worked with providing literacy education to indigenous people of Mexico, while simultaneously working with the Wycliffe Bible Translators on Bible translation. One of the students at the first summer institute in its second year 1935, Kenneth Lee Pike (1912–2000), would become the foremost figure in the history of SIL. He served as SIL's president from 1942 to 1979, then as president emeritus until his death in 2000.

In 1979 SIL's agreement with the Mexican government was officially terminated after critiques from anthropologists regarding the combination of education and missionary activities in indigenous communities, though SIL continued to be active in that country. At a conference of the Inter-American Indian Institute in Mérida, Yucatán, in November 1980, delegates denounced the Summer Institute of Linguistics, charging that it was using a scientific name to conceal its Protestant agenda and an alleged capitalist view that was alien to indigenous traditions. This led to the agreement with the Ecuadorean government being terminated in 1980, although a token presence remained. In the early 1990s, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) demanded the expulsion of SIL from the country. SIL was also expelled from Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama, and restricted in Colombia and Peru. As of 2016 SIL operates in several of those countries.

From the 1950s to 1987 the University of Oklahoma in Norman hosted SIL training. The agreement between the university and SIL was terminated in 1987 after a controversy about SIL's involvement in missionary activities and its relationship with Latin American governments.. As of 2016 SIL training is offered in many locations around the world.

SIL's as of 2016 current president, Dr. John Watters, took office in 2008 after serving as executive director from 2000 to 2007.

Contributions

SIL's principal contribution to linguistics has been the data that has been gathered and analysed from over 1,000 minority and endangered languages, many of which had not been previously studied academically. SIL endeavors to share both the data and the results of analysis in order to contribute to the overall knowledge of language. This has resulted in publications on languages such as Hixkaryana and Pirahã which have challenged the universality of some linguistic theories. SIL's work has resulted in over 20,000 technical publications, all of which are listed in the SIL Bibliography. Most of these are a reflection of linguistic fieldwork.

SIL's focus has not been on the development of new linguistic theories, but tagmemics, though no longer promoted by SIL, was developed by Kenneth Pike, who also coined the words emic and etic, more widely used today in anthropology.

Another focus of SIL is literacy work, particularly in indigenous languages. SIL assists local, regional and national agencies that are developing formal and informal education in vernacular languages. These cooperative efforts enable new advances in the complex field of educational development in multilingual and multicultural societies.

SIL provides instructors and instructional materials for linguistics programs at several major institutions of higher learning around the world. In the United States, these include Biola University, Moody Bible Institute, Houghton College, University of North Dakota, the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics and Dallas Theological Seminary. Other universities with SIL programmes include Trinity Western University in Canada, Charles Darwin University in Australia, and Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, Peru.

SIL also presents the fruits of some of its research through the International Museum of Cultures. Located in Dallas, it was developed by linguists and anthropologists associated with SIL International for the purpose of celebrating peoples of diverse cultures in an effort to promote greater appreciation and understanding of cultural differences.

Ethnologue and ISO 639-3 codes

The Ethnologue, a guide to the world's languages, is published by SIL. Starting with the 16th edition in 2009, Ethnologue uses the ISO 639-3 standard, which assigns 3-letter codes to languages; these were derived in part from the 3-letter codes that were used in the Ethnologue's 15th edition. SIL is the registration authority for the ISO 639-3 standard. The 15th edition, which was published in 2005, includes 7299 codes. A 16th edition was released in the middle of 2009, and a 17th in 2013 and 18th in 2015.

Software

SIL has developed widely used software for linguistic research. Adapt It is a tool for translating text from one language into a related language after performing limited linguistic analysis. In the field of lexicon collection, ShoeBox and the newer ToolBox (Field Linguist's Toolbox) and Lexique Pro, have largely been replaced by FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx Windows and Linux) for linguists, and WeSay (also Windows and Linux) for non-professionals. Graphite is a smart-font technology and rendering system.

Fonts

SIL has developed several widely used font sets that it makes available as freeware under the SIL Open Font License (OFL). The names of SIL fonts reflect the Biblical mission of the organization "charis" (Greek for "grace"), "doulos" (Greek for "servant") and "gentium" (Latin for "of the nations"). These fonts have become standard resources for linguists working on the documentation of the world's languages. Most of them are designed only for specific writing systems, including less common ones, such as Ethiopic, Devanagari, New Tai Lue, Hebrew, Arabic, Khmer, Yi, Myanmar, Coptic, and Tai Viet, or some more technical notation, such as cipher musical notation or IPA. Fonts that support Latin include:

Recognitions

The 1947 Summer Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America passed a resolution that the work of SIL "should be strongly commended by our Society and welcomed as one of the most promising developments in applied linguistics in this country."

SIL holds formal consultative status with UNESCO and United Nations, and has been publicly recognized by UNESCO for their work in many parts of Asia. SIL also holds non-governmental organization status in many countries.

SIL's work has received appreciation and recognition in a number of international settings. In 1973, SIL was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding. This foundation honors outstanding individuals and organizations working in Asia who manifest greatness of spirit in service to the peoples of Asia. UNESCO Literacy Prizes have been awarded to SIL's work in a number of countries: Australia (1969), Cameroon (1986), Papua New Guinea (1979), Philippines (1991).

Criticism

The organization's focus on language description, language development and Bible translation, and the missionary activities carried out by many of its field workers, have been criticized by linguists and anthropologists who argue that SIL aims to change indigenous cultures, which exacerbate the problems that cause language endangerment and death. Linguists have argued that the missionary focus of SIL makes the relation between academic linguists and their reliance on SIL software and knowledge infrastructure problematic since their goals often overlap but sometimes diverge considerably.

However, according to SIL, efforts to change cultural patterns is not equivalent to destroying cultures, and all their work is based on voluntary participation of indigenous peoples. In the SIL view ethnocide is not a valid concept, and it would lead to pessimism if one equated ethnocide with culture change imposed by the inevitable progress of civilization. SIL considers themselves as actively protecting endangered languages by promoting them within the speech community and providing mother-tongue literacy training.

Regional offices

Besides the headquarters in Dallas, SIL has offices and locally incorporated affiliated organizations in the following countries:

Africa

Americas

Oceania