SIL International (Summer Institute of Linguistics, "Summer Institute of Linguistics"), is a nongovernmental organization confession Christian evangelical , whose main goal is the design, development, documentation of languages called "minority" and translation of the Bible.

Founded in 1934 in Dallas in USA , it is historically located in the Midwestern U.S.. Also present in Latin America , she said to serve the thousands of linguistic communities in Third World countries whose languages are not written. Among the remaining members of these communities sometimes for several years, "linguists and researchers" SIL trying to study their culture and their language. Members and volunteers of this organization share a commitment to Christian evangelical. One of their goals is to include the translation and the availability of biblical texts in the local language of the communities where they work.

SIL staff consists of about 5300 members and volunteers involved in development projects in minority language communities worldwide. One of the most famous scholars of SIL was Kenneth L. Pike (en) (1912-2000), who took over from William Cameron Townsend (en) (1896-1982), founder of SIL. Yet, despite a bibliography with a few publications, the SIL is not a reference in the field of linguistic research. Indeed, most of its researchers do not have a strong enough academic background to produce descriptions that can serve as a reference for professional linguists. SIL publications were also no theoretical pretensions, and not generally aim to document the languages of the simplest way possible, enough to be able to translate the Gospels (the plugs Ethnologue.com consistently indicate the date first translation of the Bible ^Resources

The SIL provides the public:

• computing resources on language development;
• most of its major reference work on Ethnologue.com ;
• fonts, eg font " Gentium (in) "or" Doulos SIL (in) , each supporting Unicode.

Code SIL

SIL released a list of languages and dialects identified by a three-letter code, but differently from the ISO 639-2 code in many cases. This is no longer the case today, all the codes used by SIL in its publication is now based solely on the standard ISO 639-3.

However, this code was the basis for the creation of the standard ISO 639-3 (which has integrated most of the identifiers of languages ISO 639-2, with the exception of collections of languages, and language families that have been incorporated in the standard ISO 639-5 ).

Difficulties in Latin America

In 1970 - 80 , the organization has been accused of being colonialist and anti-Aboriginal CONFENAIE by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Amazon. Proponents of this view argue that SIL has contributed to:

• destruction of indigenous cultures (at the time, a major goal was the translation of the New Testament into indigenous languages)
• collaboration with repressive governments, multinationals and the CIA.

In 1975 , thirty anthropologists have signed the complaint of Patzcuaro , in which the SIL was denounced as a tool of American imperialism.

See also

Related articles

• ISO 639
• List of ISO 639-3 codes

References

External Links

• SIL International
• Wycliffe
• Education and ethnocide : About Indian Latin American Centre for the Study of Indigenous Languages of America CNRS, with a paragraph on the SIL)
• Louis-Jean Calvet , War of the languages, Payot, Paris, 1987 204.

• Portal associations
• Bible Portal
• Portal anthropology

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