SIL has produced software that enables peoples of the world to use the computer in their mother language.

In order to have a complete index, the whole range of SIL software is covered here, from the state-of-the-art linguistic analysis program to ancient text processing tools that are only of historic interest. Searching for software by linguistic task, interface language, license or operating system can be done through LingTranSoft, which includes all SIL Software, plus other software used to support language development and translation tasks.

Please contact the Language Technology team if you have questions or need assistance.

A separate page lists fonts produced by SIL.

Web Applications


The Combine is an easy-to-use Rapid Word Collection tool. It facilitates gathering words by semantic domain, along with translations, audio, and notes, to more fully capture form and meaning.

A useful, simple tool for learning to recognize, transcribe, and produce the sounds of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

An online collaborative lexical editor that syncs with FLEx. It looks good on mobile devices, features collaboration, commenting and review, user roles and handles a variety of lexical fields. Watch a quick overview.

A dynamic, collaborative reference to the writing systems of the world, with detailed information on scripts, characters, languages - and the remaining needs for supporting them in the computing realm.

Scriptoria is a workflow management platform that makes it possible for any user to build and update Scripture App Builder apps for mobile devices in any language.

Scripture Forge enhances your Paratext project with flexible features for community checking, as well as AI-enabled related-language adaptation suggestions. Natural Language Processing technology learns as you work to provide improved suggestions that reflect your translation decisions.

Gives language groups the ability to publish bilingual or multilingual dictionaries on the web with a minimum of technical help.

Other Supported Software

SIL International recommends that people use this software to accomplish their language processing tasks. This software is maintained and updated. In addition, technical support may be received from the application developer(s).


Helps translate texts between related languages (a process called adaptation). Using Adapt It, translators have been able to dramatically reduce the total time spent on their translation projects.

Create colorful and engaging literacy games for a new language in less than one week. These literacy games build spelling skills through increasingly difficult activities. Apps created with Alpha Tiles run on Android devices.

A tool that explores different algorithms for parsing orthographic words into syllables and inserting discretionary hyphens in words.

Bible Analysis and Research Tool (BART)

Helps you compare languages using lexicostatistics and comparative linguistics techniques. It can be used to automate much of the process of comparing word lists from different language varieties.

Dekereke is a software aid to phonological analysis. It provides a system for maintaining and processing phonetic / phonological data, and functions for searching and analyzing such data to answer questions about the phonological patterns in a language. For Windows and Mac.

Helps you to build customized dictionary apps for Android smartphones and tablets. You specify the lexicon data file to use, the app name, fonts, colors, the audio, illustrations and the icon.

A data management and analysis tool for field linguists. It is especially useful for maintaining lexical data, and for parsing and interlinearizing text, but it can be used to manage virtually any kind of data.

A rule-based machine translation system that is easy to use for ordinary linguists. It leverages FLEx (Fieldworks Language Explorer) and a powerful transfer rule language to give high-quality results. Your project may already have lexicons in FLEx so you have a head start!

A comprehensive list of font development tools developed and used by SIL. These include a script for building composite glyphs in FontLab (FLGlyphBuilder), the command line version of TypeTuner, and other tools.

Helps you produce a high-quality dramatized audio recording of Scripture.

A package that can be used to create "smart fonts" capable of displaying writing systems with most complex behaviors.

Bible recording made easy! HearThis provides a do-it-yourself alternative for communities wanting to get translated scripture text into their own language.

Provides various keyboards for typing in IPA data. Solutions for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X are available.

Helps you build customized keyboard apps for Android smartphones and tablets. A keyboard app allows users to add a system keyboard to their device, enabling them to type in their language within other apps such as Gmail, Facebook and WhatsApp.

A tool that lets you describe a linguistic tree and produce a graphic image of it. LingTree Helper can make the job easier.

LinguaLinks Library is a collection of electronic reference materials designed to support language fieldwork. The Library takes advantage of computer capabilities to provide information, instructions, training, and advice.

OneStory Editor is documentation software for Oral Bible storying.

Paratext Lite is an Android version of Paratext that includes Send/Receive, Project Notes, the ability to edit translation text, access to translation resources, and many other features.

An expert system that produces a consistent PC-PATR grammar which covers the vast majority of syntax for a given language. It also produces a draft of a grammar write-up based on the user's responses.

Helps you discover and test the rules of sound in a language. Provided with a corpus of phonetic data, it automatically charts the sounds. There are a wide range of search capabilities to aid your analysis process.

Assists literacy workers by making it simpler to develop primers. It does tedious work which native authors and literacy specialists traditionally had to do themselves.

Designed to be a companion for Paratext, PTXprint is a stand-alone program which allows you to create high quality PDFs for trial publications of scripture. It has a multitude of easily configurable options allowing a whole range of outputs.

Helps you build customized apps for smartphones and tablets.

Provides tools through which you can change the encoding, font, and/or script of text in documents. Works with Microsoft Word and other Office documents, XML documents, and SFM text and lexicon documents.

A font viewing program for Windows which allows you to see a font's contents through the eyes of a different application or operating system.

A Paratext plugin that adds a feature to help with comprehension checking.

Allows users to easily modify certain SIL fonts so that variant glyphs or smart-font behaviours (together called font features) become active, creating tuned fonts with feature settings based on the needs of specific users.

A Unicode Keyboard Layout Editor for macOS versions 10.2 and later.

A way to author and archive linguistic papers or books using XML.

Unsupported Software

Unsupported software is available to use on an “as is” basis. The software may be helpful to accomplish tasks for which it was designed. However, due to limited resourcing, SIL will not provide support or bug fixes for the software.


An online lexical database of language word list data with audio samples for linguistic analysis and historical and comparative linguistic reconstruction.

An add-on for the popular flashcard program Anki. It adds the ability to drill by selecting from a grid (similar to Rosetta Stone or Vocabulary Manager).

Convert Unicode USFM files, unzipped ETEN DBL bundles, or USFX files to produce HTML, EPUB3 files, Crosswire Sword Project modules, Microsoft Word XML, PDF files, or other formats.

A useful, simple tool for learning to recognize, transcribe, and produce the sounds of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

A Perl script that provides a quick way to create at least a first draft of an XML keyboard layout file (.keylayout) for Mac OS X version 10.2 or later.

Don't keep your lexicon to yourself! Share it with others! You've spent years working on your dictionary, but how easy is it for others to make the most of it? Lexique Pro is all about making your data usable, accessible and easy to share with others.

A set of assorted utilities for LIFT files that provides a way to make certain kinds of bulk edits to data used by FLEx, WeSay and Lexique Pro.

Aims to provide a zero-configuration backup system primarily for language development workers.

An add-on that provides a menu of tools for linguistic writeups and other documents written in lesser-known languages.

Processes language data from FieldWorks and Paratext into attractive and suitable formats for draft printing or publishing.

A tool that makes it much easier to see the results of syntactic parses produced by the PC-PATR program.

A simple little tool which makes it delightfully easy to make booklets! Create your document as normal, without worrying about booklet layout issues.

A tool that helps literacy workers to quickly and easily perform the basic design steps of primer preparation.

Converts spreadsheets containing linguistic data to Standard Format (for use with Linguist's Toolbox, Phonology Assistant, Lexique Pro, etc.).

A Microsoft Word template to provide smarter and safer layout of RTF files exported from Paratext, Adapt It or Fieldworks Translation Editor.

Helps field workers analyze and document the kinship structure and terminology used in the language of another culture.

Used to check and clean up standard format lexicon data, and optionally convert it to LIFT.

Facilitates acoustic analysis of speech sounds.

A quick-and-dirty Unicode-aware replacement for Ccount, the character count utility. The program is available both as the Perl source, and as a standalone Windows EXE.

A multimedia tool for learning vocabulary. It is an electronic flash card system with audio.

Helps non-linguists build a dictionary in their own language. It has various ways to help native speakers to think of words in their language and enter some basic data about them (no backslash codes, just forms to fill in).

Aids in the collection and analysis of word lists. It is primarily a tool for the dialect surveyor who is concerned with gaining a present-day picture of the language situation in a given area.

A typesetting system based on a merger of Donald Knuth's TeX system with Unicode and modern font technologies.

Discontinued Software

Discontinued software is available to use on an “as is” basis. The software may be helpful to accomplish tasks for which it was designed. SIL will not provide support or bug fixes for the software as there are current tools that do the same work


Is useful for finding all occurrences of specified characters, words, or phrases in a text file or series of text files, and then changing them in a consistent way. The change may be done in every occurrence found or only when certain conditions are met.