The Charlene Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole and Dialect Studies (or the Sato Center for short) was set up in January 2002. The Center is named in honor of the memory of Dr. Charlene Sato, who was a leader in the effort to create and sustain international cooperative work in pidgins and creoles and taught sociolinguistics and pidgin and creole studies at the Department of ESL at the University of Hawai`i until her tragic early death in 1996.

The aims of the Sato Center are to promote and carry out descriptive, theoretical and applied research on pidgins, creoles and minority dialects, and to disseminate the results of this research to scholars, educators and the general public in Hawai'i and around the world. The center is emphasizing research that would be of some benefit to the speakers of these kinds of language varieties.