Language resource management - Simplified natural language — Part 1: Basic concepts and general principles (abbreviated as SimpL-1) is developed since 2009 by ISO and currently is at the Working Draft stage (ISO/AWI 24620-1).

It is a common knowledge that natural language is very versatile and has a wide range of speech varieties, styles, grammatical constructions etc. Sometimes it is difficult for experts to understand a text in their own scientific field, and the more for just ordinary readers. The problems increase, whether the text should be understood by non-native speakers or be translated by an expert in this field.

The goal of the standard is to create a specification, which describes a set of writing rules and a dictionary of agreed words with their definition. It provides a clear and unambiguous language (for example Simplified English for English), comprehensible to (all) native and non-native speakers.

The key tasks of basic concepts and general principles for simplified natural languages are:

• "Reducing ambiguity;
• Speeding up reading;
• Improving comprehension for people whose first language is not the language of the document at hand;
• Improving comprehension for people with different domain or application background;
• Human translation and localization to become easier, faster and more cost effective;
• Computer-assisted translation and machine translation;
• Re-usability of language resources in larger application scenarios, like Semantic Web or decision-support systems.” (ISO/PWI 24620-1)

Furthermore, this specification builds a systematic approach that can make cross-language and cross-domain applications of simplified natural languages more effective.

Creating understandable texts is very challenging, especially in an internationally collaborated project where the project partners are of different backgrounds and from different institutions and countries. The effective and coherent use of simplified natural language allows a better compatibility among several applications and resources.

The purpose of this standard is to develop simplified natural language in many languages and for various application fields. The standard is based on Simplified English originally developed as a “controlled language” for aerospace industry maintenance manuals.