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William W. McLendon, Jr.
Associate Director,
International Information and Technology Services,
SIL International
(Dallas, USA)
New Developments and Trends
to Facilitate Multilingualism in Cyberspace
Introduction
SIL International is a faith-based, non-profit organization committed to
building the capacity of language communities worldwide for sustainable
language development. We define language development as 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.
From its beginnings in 1934, SIL has had the privilege of working with over
2,590 language communities representing more than 1.7 billion people in nearly
100 countries. SIL’s staff see their work as an outgrowth of their Christian
commitment, valuing service, academic excellence, sharing of knowledge
and partnership as we serve language communities in linguistics, literacy,
translation and other language-centered development activities.
In addition to language development activities undertaken with individual
language communities, SIL takes an active role in advocacy for minority
languages at the local, national and international level. Please see our web site
at for more information.
The increase in global collaboration on the Internet in recent years has opened
significant opportunities for minority language communities. We are witnessing
an increased visibility of and support for the needs of these communities from
the governmental, commercial and non-profit sectors. Collaborative efforts to
facilitate the use of all the world’s languages in cyberspace are growing.
This report highlights several significant efforts and SIL’s participation in
them. It reflects the work of many SIL colleagues and partners worldwide 7 .
7
Some information in this report is repeated from the author’s 2008 report at the I International Conference
on Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Cyberspace (Yakutsk, Russian Federation, 2008).
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