March 2023 - Welcome to our inaugural newsletter. We started serving with SIL International in 2021, so you might be wondering why it has taken until 2023 for us to start this newsletter? Well, we have been busy traveling and getting to know SIL International and T.R.’s new responsibilities. After nearly twenty five years at Taylor University, our daughters graduating college, and starting a new position at SIL, there was a lot for us to learn and change in our lives. Our first year and a half with SIL International have included four trips to Texas and one to North Carolina (initial Orientation with SIL, the Language Technology Conference 2022, the Paratext Summit 2022, Leadership Pillars, and the Next Paratext meetings). Thank you for your patience as we have settled into our new responsibilities and schedule. To help bring everyone up to speed, here is a quick overview of what T.R. is doing now.
Who is SIL? (also a Video about SIL)
SIL International is a faith-based nonprofit organization committed to serving language communities worldwide as they build capacity for sustainable language development. SIL works alongside ethnolinguistic communities and their partners as they discover how language development addresses the challenging areas of their daily lives—social, cultural, political, economic and spiritual. SIL's core contribution areas are Bible translation, literacy, education, development, linguistic research and language tools. As of March 2022, we are involved in approximately 1,631 active language projects in 98 countries. These projects impact more than 855+ million people within 1,341 local communities. SIL’s work brings together more than 4,200 staff from 84 countries who work alongside thousands more local partners and community volunteers worldwide. SIL International is one of Wycliffe's key partners. While Wycliffe does the recruiting and sending of missionaries, SIL is the primary on-the-ground organization for which many Wycliffe missionaries serve around the world doing the work of Bible Translation. (http://www.sil.org)
OUR VISION
We long to see people flourishing in community using the languages they value most.
OUR MISSION
Inspired by God’s love, we advocate, build capacity, and work with local communities to apply language expertise that advances meaningful development, education, and engagement with Scripture.
What is Language Technology?
Language Technology develops and supports a wide range of language technology, software, keyboards, and fonts to assist with the language development, Bible translation, and scripture engagement activities of SIL. Within Language Technology, we have teams devoted to Bible Translation Software, Language Software Development, Writing Systems, Training, and Operations. (http://software.sil.org)
What does T.R. do as the Director of Bible Translation Software?
T.R. leads a global team of eight project managers currently overseeing twelve active software development projects devoted to Bible Translation, Orality, Scripture Engagement, Bible Stories, Natural Language Processing, and Software Testing. He also leads the Talent Acquisition team focused on recruiting and mobilization for Language Technology. These teams include staff in eight countries: Canada, Ecuador, Germany, India, Thailand, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the US. Utilizing his years of experience before coming to SIL, he serves on multiple organizational workgroups including leadership development, donation systems, and collaboration with universities. (http://www.trandangie.com)
Hopefully that provides you an overview of our work with SIL International. More to come in future newsletters.
