Welcome to SIL’s Non-Roman Script Initiative

Sharon Correll, 2006-09-12; 17254 reads

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The Non-Roman Script Initiative is a department of SIL International whose task is to provide computing resources for minority language groups around the world who write their languages in complex ways.

The NRSI Vision

Our vision is that language communities and the people who work for them be able to work effectively and productively regardless of the writing system used in a given community, i.e., that script-related computing issues do not impede them in their work.

Our mission

The mission of the Non-Roman Script Initiative is to provide guidance, information, research and development for SIL International and its partners to facilitate the use of non-Roman and complex scripts in linguistic study, translation, literacy and publishing.

Could you be a part of our team?

Providing non-Roman computer solutions requires many skills such as those of...

Type Designer: creates digital fonts with the special character designs needed
Script Engineer: develops and adapts software to make non-Roman fonts behave correctly
Script Researcher: investigates and describes how writing systems work for various languages
Programmer: writes the software tools needed for font development and text processing in complex scripts
Technical Writer: prepares documentation for font and utility packages, writes web-based training material
Unicode Expert: interacts with the software industry and international standards bodies in support of minority language groups
Technical Projects Manager: helps the rest of the team make progress in their work!

NRSI staff are volunteers who are financially sponsored by others who want to support these various projects. There are also opportunities for part-time involvement. For more information on these opportunities and how you might fit in to the team, see the SIL FAQ or contact the NRSI at: nrsi@sil.org.