Overview of Translation in SIL
Translation in SIL focuses on research and development in translation theory and practice, academic training programs, and consultant and technical support required for producing quality translations in partnership with many different ethnic communities around the world.
A wide variety of cultural backgrounds, grammatical and semantic structures, phonological systems, orthographic traditions, and popular aspirations exist around the world today. This creates a special challenge for translators of trans-cultural textual material. SIL seeks to meet this challenge by promoting good communication through translation. SIL provides resource materials and training for translators and facilitates the team efforts in specific translation projects.
Many members of SIL interact with other professional translators through participation in national and international translation organizations by sharing insights gained in their own research. These papers and many other articles are published in meeting proceedings and in journals on translation thus providing the information to trainers and translators.
SIL provides a variety of training for translators. This is done through formal courses at different academic levels, through technical courses and workshops in more local settings, and through informal mentoring in the context of routine translation work.
Currently SIL is working in partnership with speakers of more than 1,000 different languages in various capacities. In language groups where there has been very little education, the SIL members may work very closely with co-translators. The contribution of each will depend on level of education and training of the mother-tongue speaker. However, SIL commonly assigns a team of SIL members to a translation project to serve as on-going facilitators or consultants to local mother-tongue translators. Other specialist personnel assist from time to time.