How to translate a church service: the complete guide

Why translate the service at all?

A refugee family from Ukraine, a Polish couple who moved for work, a Spanish student on Erasmus, a Romanian grandmother visiting her children: they can sing along with a tune they recognise and follow the shape of the liturgy, but a thirty-minute sermon in English is a different matter. Without translation they stay guests. With it, they can actually take part in what is said.

Translation also helps the church itself. Notices reach everyone, a guest speaker from abroad can preach in their own language, and international members no longer depend on the one bilingual friend who whispers in their ear every week.

The options, briefly

There are four common ways to translate a church service. A volunteer can whisper interpret for one or two people sitting nearby. An interpreter can speak into a microphone while listeners wear receiver headsets. A professional interpreter can be booked for special occasions. Or the church can use a church translation app that translates the speaker live with AI and sends the result to listeners' phones.

Each has its place. Human interpreters bring judgement, warmth and pastoral sensitivity that software does not. An app scales to several languages at once without needing a bilingual volunteer for each one, every Sunday. The guide interpreter or AI translation compares them in a table. The rest of this guide focuses on live AI translation with ChurchTranslate.

How live AI translation works

In short: the sound of the speaker goes from your church into a laptop or phone running the ChurchTranslate broadcast page in the browser. AI recognises the speech, translates it and voices it in the chosen language. Listeners scan a QR code, pick their language and hear the translated voice on their own phone, a few seconds behind the speaker, with live captions on the screen.

Listeners need no account and no installation: the listening page opens in the browser on any smartphone, Android included. There is also an iOS app in the App Store for those who prefer it. Visitors can switch the translated audio off and only read the captions, show the original text alongside the translation, or use a large-text reading mode.

ChurchTranslate currently translates into 11 languages: English, Norwegian, Ukrainian, Polish, Romanian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic and Dutch. The speaker can preach in any of the same 11 languages; the technician sets the speaker language and can change it with one tap, for example when a guest speaker takes the pulpit.

Step by step: your first translated service

1. 01
   Agree on why and for whom

   Talk in your leadership team about who you want to reach: newcomers, an international congregation, visitors in summer, a regular guest speaker. That decides which languages you switch on and how you announce it.

2. 02
   Sign up your church

   Create an account on the sign-up page, give your church a name, set the speaker language and choose which languages visitors may pick. You can change these later.

3. 03
   Run the free trial service

   After signing up you get a free 10-minute trial service. Use it on a weekday with a colleague in another room listening on their phone. You will learn more in those ten minutes than in an hour of reading.

4. 04
   Connect the sound

   Feed the broadcast laptop or phone with the cleanest sound you have, ideally a mix from the desk. The details are in the audio setup guide.

5. 05
   Prepare the preacher and the team

   Ask the preacher to speak clearly and to name Bible references fully. Invite the other technicians to your team so more than one person can run the broadcast.

6. 06
   Make the QR code visible

   Put the QR code on the screen before the service, at the door and in the notice sheet. Ask a welcome team member to help first-time listeners.

7. 07
   Broadcast and listen along

   Start the broadcast a few minutes before the service. Keep an eye on the input level and listen on a phone yourself during the first service.

8. 08
   Review afterwards

   Read the transcript in your service history, correct obvious errors, and ask listeners how it went. Small adjustments in sound and preaching make a big difference.

A more detailed list with timings is in the checklist for your first translated service.

What equipment do you need?

Less than most people expect. You need a laptop or a phone with a modern browser, a stable internet connection at the church, and a way to get the speaker's voice into that device. You do not need receivers, headsets, an interpreting booth or extra speakers. Listeners bring their own phones; earbuds or headphones are recommended so the translation does not disturb their neighbours.

The quality of what goes in determines the quality of what comes out. A clean signal from the mixing desk, through a USB audio interface into the laptop, gives the best results. A laptop microphone at the back of a reverberant stone church gives the worst. If you can only use a phone, place it close to the preacher or near a loudspeaker and test it first.

Choosing languages

Start with the languages of people who are actually there, or whom you are actively inviting. In a typical British town that might be Polish, Romanian or Ukrainian; in an international church in Brussels or Amsterdam it might be French, Spanish and Portuguese; in a congregation with Arabic-speaking members it will be Arabic. You can offer several at once, and a language only uses credits while someone is listening to it.

Be honest about what is not available. ChurchTranslate does not currently offer Russian, Chinese, Tigrinya, Farsi or Turkish, for example. If those are your main needs, a human interpreter or a bilingual buddy may still be the answer for now. The language pages, such as Ukrainian and Polish, go into the specifics.

What does it cost?

ChurchTranslate works with credits: 1 credit is 1 minute of translation into 1 language, with unlimited listeners per language. A 120-minute service into English, Spanish and Ukrainian uses 3 × 120 = 360 credits, whether five or fifty people are listening. Plans start at €65 per month for 480 credits (Lite), enough for four two-hour services into one language. The costs guide has more worked examples, and the current plans are on the pricing page.

Privacy and the congregation

Translating a service means processing the speaker's voice. ChurchTranslate sends the audio over its own server to Google's Gemini API (paid tier), which recognises, translates and voices the speech. No audio recordings are stored. Text transcripts of the service are kept in the church's own archive, which the church manages. Requests on the paid API are not used to train Google's models. Processing can take place outside the EU. The privacy and GDPR guide explains what to tell your congregation.

Bible names, church words and accuracy

AI translation follows the line of a sermon well, and prayers and notices come through clearly. The hardest part is names (Nebuchadnezzar, Melchizedek), place names, theological terms and quotations. ChurchTranslate keeps Bible names and church terms in mind and corrects known terms in the captions, but it is not perfect. Preachers can help a lot by speaking clearly and announcing references in full. See Bible names and terms for practical tips.

Helping listeners on the day

Most visitors manage on their own once they see the QR code, but a short explanation helps: scan, choose your language, put in an earbud. Older visitors may need someone to sit with them for a minute. Some prefer to read the captions only and hear the preacher in the room. After the service, listeners can ask for the transcript by e-mail in their own language, which is useful for people who want to reread or share the sermon.

We have written a guide in simple language that you can send to visitors: listening with the QR code.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Starting on a big Sunday. Your first translated service should not be Easter Day. Test on an ordinary Sunday or a midweek meeting.
• Relying on the laptop's built-in microphone. It picks up the room, the congregation and the echo. Use a feed from the desk if you can.
• Hiding the QR code. If visitors have to ask for it, many will not. Put it on the screen and at the door.
• Leaving it to one person. If the only technician who knows the setup is ill, there is no translation. Invite a second person to your team.
• Forgetting to switch the speaker language when a guest preaches in another language. It is one tap, but someone needs to do it.
• Not asking listeners. They will tell you if the sound was too quiet or the translation lagged. Ask them.

Translating more than the Sunday service

Once the setup works, churches often use it for other moments: a wedding, baptism or funeral with family from abroad, a conference or event, or summer services with tourists and visitors. For one-to-one conversations outside a service, such as a chat after church with a newcomer, the separate Direct translate tool translates speech through your own phone or laptop microphone, in the browser.

Small congregations ask whether this is only for large churches. It is not: a church with one Ukrainian family and a modest budget can run a single language on the Lite plan. See the small church for an example.

Where to go next

If you have read this far, you have the full picture. The fastest next step is to sign up and run the free trial service with two phones in the building. From there, the audio setup guide and the first-service checklist will carry you to your first translated Sunday.