A language holds more than words. It carries a community's stories, its knowledge of the land, its humour and its way of seeing the world. When the last fluent speakers are gone, much of that goes with them.
Around 40 per cent of the world's roughly 7,000 languages are considered endangered, and many are spoken by small or isolated communities with few resources to keep them alive. This page shows two ways to help: supporting the organisations that already do this work, and the contribution Ravira makes through its own tools.
Support the people doing the work
These organisations have spent decades helping communities document, teach and revive their languages. If you would like to give, please donate to them directly: your support goes straight to their projects.
- Foundation for Endangered Languages (United Kingdom). A registered charity in England and Wales since 1998 that funds small grants for projects documenting, protecting and promoting endangered languages around the world.
- Endangered Language Fund (United States). A non-profit founded in 1996 that funds grants to individuals, tribes and museums for language preservation, including literacy materials and teaching programmes.
- Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages (United States). A non-profit research institute that works directly with communities and has helped create more than 100 online living dictionaries.
Ravira has no connection to these organisations and does not receive any part of the donations. We list them because their work matters.
What Ravira contributes
Ravira helps in the way it knows best: with translation.
We offer free translation characters to organisations and communities working with smaller or endangered languages. The support is meant for real projects, for example:
- teaching materials and bilingual resources for schools and community classes;
- information that a community needs in a widely spoken language, or that outsiders need in the community's own language;
- cultural and heritage projects, such as stories, songs or local history prepared for a wider audience.
The support applies to the languages Ravira works with, currently 108, and is sized to each project.
How to apply
Write to humans@ravira.dev with the subject "Language community support" and tell us, in a few lines:
- who you are and which community or organisation you work with;
- the languages involved;
- what you want to translate and roughly how much text it is.
We read every message and reply to each one.
Small steps, many voices
No single organisation or tool can keep a language alive. That work belongs to the people who speak it, and the rest of us can help by giving them time, attention and the right tools. If this page leads even one reader to support a language project, or one community to share its words more widely, it has done its job.
Ravira is a company, not a charity, and does not collect donations. Donations go directly to the organisations listed above. Figures on endangered languages come from UNESCO.