79 languages, up to 40 at a time
The full list has 79 target languages. Your church switches on up to 40 of them in the settings, and visitors choose from that shorter list on their phone, where they can also search by name. Most US churches need far fewer: one language for a Hispanic ministry, two or three for a multi-ethnic church in a college town, a longer list for a conference or a church that works with refugee resettlement.
The speaker's language comes from the same list. For most churches that is English, but a Korean, Spanish or Brazilian congregation can set its own language as the speaker language and translate into English for the next generation. When a guest preaches in another language, your tech team switches the speaker language with one tap.
How to choose
- Start with who is already in the room. Ask your greeters, ushers and small group leaders which languages they hear in the lobby. One family is reason enough to switch a language on.
- Begin small. One or two languages are easier to announce from the stage, and your A/V team gets used to the broadcast before you add more.
- Plan for events you can see coming, such as a combined Easter service, a visiting mission team or a regional conference.
- Watch for the Beta label. Thirteen languages with fewer resources, among them Amharic, Burmese, Khmer, Kinyarwanda and Hausa, show a Beta label in the church settings. That is our own estimate, since Google publishes no quality tiers.
- Test before a real service. Every new church gets a free 10-minute trial service. Ask a member who speaks the language to listen and tell you honestly how it sounds.
What is not on the list
Some languages that American churches ask about are not available: Haitian Creole, Somali, Tigrinya, Kurdish, Pashto, Yoruba and Igbo, for example, and Cantonese is not a spoken option. Chinese comes in Simplified and Traditional characters, and Persian (Farsi) is available while Dari is not a separate choice. More languages may follow. It is better to tell a family this plainly than to let them find out on Sunday morning.
A language only costs credits while someone listens
You pay per minute and per language, never per listener. 1 credit is 1 minute of translation into 1 language, and a language uses credits only while someone is actually listening to it. Switching on ten languages costs nothing extra on a Sunday when only Spanish is chosen. A 120-minute service into English, Spanish and Ukrainian is 3 × 120 = 360 credits, whether five people listen or five hundred.
| Plan | Per month | Credits | Roughly enough for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $65 | 480 | 4 two-hour services into 1 language |
| Duo | $100 | 960 | 4 two-hour services into 2 languages |
| Standard | $250 | 2,400 | 4 two-hour services into 5 languages |
| Complete | $400 | 4,320 | 4 two-hour services into 9 languages |
Plan credits expire at the next month. Extra credit packs never expire: 300 credits for $50, 600 for $90 and 1,800 for $255. See the pricing page, the guide to church translation costs, or start with how to translate a church service.