The Sindhi Language Authority (abbreviated as SLA; Sindhi: سنڌي ٻوليءَ جو با اختيار ادارو, romanized: Sindhī Bōlī’a Jō Bā Ikhtiyār Idārō) is an autonomous institution under the Government of the Pakistani province of Sindh that fosters the Sindhi language and literature, works to develop and promote the language in Sindh, and to do original research in the Sindhi language. It comes under the administrative control of the Culture, Tourism and Antiquities Department.[1]
The SLA was established under the act Use of Sindhi Language Act 1972, and the Teaching, Promotion and Use of Sindhi Language (Amendment) Act, 1990 of the Government of Sindh.[2][3][4] There is a Board of Governors to frame the policies for achieving the aims and objectives of authority and ensure their implementation. The first Board of Governors was constituted under the chairmanship of Nabi Bux Khan Baloch, a scholar and writer.
Since the establishment of the Sindhi Language Authority, different scholars and writers were appointed as its chairman, who have contributed to the development and promotion of the Sindhi language.[5]
Objectives
The Sindhi Language Authority (SLA) explores strategies to advance, educate, and encourage the utilization of Sindhi. Additionally, it upholds and enhances the standing of Sindhi across official and semi-official documentation. SLA also oversees the proper application of Sindhi in official records, manuals, publications, textbooks, newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, periodic publications, and other enduring documents. [6][7]
Organizational structure
Sindhi Language Authority has been administratively divided i seven sections for achieving its objectives which are: Publication & Research Section which deals all kinds of books publication, research journals and magazines, Program Sections which arranges day to day planned programs, dramas linguistic seminars and symposiums, Encyclopedia Sindhiana[8] which has vital team of researchers who collects data from all over the Sindh and compile it in alphabetically order and publish it in series of the Encyclopedia, Dictionary Section[9] deals the etymology and compilation of the Sindhi Language thesaurus, Language Development Project section[10] (Planning & development) arranges the helping seminars and add-on sittings with Literary and academics departments under the umbrella of Government of Sindh for development & implementing Sindhi Language in institutions, Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo Audio & Video Studio where multimedia programs, interviews and tradition folk literary people of Sindh shares their creative skills poetry and Sindhi Folk wisdom and Sindhi Informatics section develops web portals of Sindhi Literature & Sindhi programming of digitization in Sindhi Computing.
The authority has been administratively divided into three departments known as Publication,[11] Programs and Institute of Sindhi Computing.
Publication & Research Section
On the publication and research Section also known as Encyclopedia Sindhiana,[12] dictionaries,[13] classical Sindhi books,[14] books for children[15] research material on Sindhi language and literature[16] Indus script and Indus civilization etc and other different descriptions have been published. A news report in 2015 suggested numerous significant issues regarding the governance and academic rigour of SLA publications.[17]
Program
The Program side arranges seminars, symposiums, lectures, training workshops and conferences on various subjects relating to the promotion, teaching and use of Sindhi language. Similarly, “Ibrahim Joyo AV Studio” has prepared significant AV material regarding preservation of dialects and sub- dialects of Sindhi language.
Institute of Sindhi Computing
Institute of Sindhi Computing is the youngest section of the Authority. Yet it has achieved progress in Sindhi Computing. It has launched several Android based mobile applications.[18] Moreover Sindhi language has been registered on Microsoft cloud and added Sindhi language in core programming of Google. SLA is also the member of Microsoft Partnership Networks.
On 21 February 2017, SLA launched first Sindhi Optical character recognition[19] by the Team leader Amar Fayaz Buriro who was continuously working on this project and finally launched its first beta version.[20][21]
The authority established the Sindhi Dictionary Board for the compilation of dictionary.[22]
The Authority wrote letters to the private schools of the province to teach Sindhi language subject in their schools and it also demanded sign boards on the national highways and roads be written in Sindhi.[23][24]
List of SLA chairpersons
Since the establishment of Sindhi Language Authority below mentioned Scholars were appointed as chairman.
