MASTERWORD

AND MASTERWORD INSTITUTE

our support for the Mayan Languages Preservation Project

MasterWord Services, Inc. is more than a global leading language services provider. For over three decades, we’ve been there alongside public organizations, NGOs, healthcare systems, and educational institutions, providing language and communication access to ensure no language and no person is left behind. MasterWord has been actively involved with both the Unesco Year and Decade of Indigenous Languages and has been an advocate for language preservation and language access.

Although this platform and initial funding for the project were provided by MasterWord, the project success is ensured by the Mayan language communities who are actively participating to bring their languages into a wide-ranging digital format. It is a site led by Indigenous Mayan language speakers and for Mayan language speakers. We believe that the sucess of this project can become a roadmap for language preservation and eventually full digital presense for other communities.

MasterWord’s founder and CEO, Ludmila Golovine, developed an interest in Mayan languages, both past and present, by way of ancestry. The great grandniece of an accomplished epigrapher and ethnographer, Yuri Knorozov, Ludmila has a personal connection to language revitalization and preservation. Yuri’s documentation and analysis of Mayan writing systems is widely credited as a major step in the eventual decipherment of ancient Mayan script. Ludmila is following in her great-uncle’s footsteps by providing support for contemporary Mayan language speakers as the wage into the waters of tomorrow. “I would like to see Mayan languages and culture thriving and fully digitally present as an equitable member of the global community fully engaging in educational and economic opportunities available on the digital crossroads of tomorrow.”