How to translate a sermon live: six ways churches do it.

Six ways, side by side

This guide is for the pastor, the church council and the volunteer at the sound desk in a church where some people in the pews cannot follow the sermon in the language it is preached in.

Approach	What it needs	Fits when
Volunteer interpreter	What it needsA bilingual member who whispers beside the listener, or speaks into a tour-guide or receiver system.	Fits whenOne language, and a volunteer who can be there every week.
Professional interpreters	What it needsInterpreters in a soundproof booth, usually two per language, plus receivers and a technician.	Fits whenConferences and large gatherings with a budget.
Printed liturgy and readings	What it needsThe order of service, songs and Bible readings in each language, on paper or on screen.	Fits whenThe fixed parts of the service should be followable.
A separate service	What it needsA pastor or leader who speaks the language.	Fits whenA large group shares one language.
Translation on each phone	What it needsA feed from the microphone or soundboard; listeners bring a phone and earbuds.	Fits whenSeveral languages at once, or no interpreter. It is machine translation.
Captions on the screen	What it needsYour presentation software and a service that sends text to it.	Fits whenMost of the people who need help read the same language.

The six, one by one

1. A volunteer interpreter from the congregation

With no equipment, a bilingual member sits next to the listener and translates quietly while the pastor preaches. Interpreters call this whispered interpreting. It works for one or two people sitting close by.

For more listeners you need a tour-guide or receiver system: the interpreter speaks into a small transmitter and each listener wears a receiver with an earpiece. Audio rental companies rent these by the day and sell them outright; ask for the number of receivers, earpieces and a charging case in the quote. Simultaneous interpreting is tiring, and professional interpreters swap about every twenty minutes. A volunteer working alone has nobody to swap with, the service stops when they are ill or away, each volunteer covers one language, and the receivers have to be charged, handed out and collected.

2. Professional simultaneous interpreters

The standard at international conferences: interpreters sit in a soundproof booth and listeners hear them on headsets. The booth standard, ISO 4043, makes room for two interpreters per language because they take turns. Interpreting agencies and equipment rental firms quote on request. It is more than an ordinary Sunday needs, but can be right for a conference or a large special service.

3. Liturgy, songs and readings in several languages

What stays the same from week to week can be prepared once. Many denominations publish their order of service in several languages, and Bible societies sell Bibles and New Testaments in most languages a congregation is likely to need. Bible apps such as YouVersion carry hundreds of translations. Printed material covers the liturgy, the readings and the songs, but not the sermon or the announcements.

4. A separate service or group in that language

Some churches hold a separate service, Bible study or fellowship group in the language. It needs a leader who speaks it, and the two groups no longer share the same service.

5. Live translation on each listener's own phone

A service takes the sound from the microphone or the soundboard and turns it into translated speech and captions, which listeners follow in the browser on their own phone after scanning a QR code. With Koine they need no app, account or receiver. Each language is translated once and shared by everyone who selects it, so the price follows languages and hours, not the number of listeners. Koine covers 132 languages, all with translated voice and captions, a few seconds behind the speaker; in some, the voice reads the finished captions aloud, about ten seconds behind. A church can start with a free Sunday: up to 3 hours in up to 5 languages, sized for 25 listeners, with no card, plus a 15-minute test any time. After that, hours cost USD 10 per language-hour with no subscription, or the Lite plan is USD 96 a month for 12 language-hours, sized for 75 listeners with nobody cut off. In Volda, Norway, fifteen members from Ukraine followed the service on their own phones this way.

Other services may suit you better. On price, Glossa charges USD 5 an hour per language. Hope Translator gives 30 free minutes a month to five phones. Sunflower AI offers a free trial with no card. OneAccord lets a volunteer correct the transcript before it is translated, and LiveVoice carries human interpreters to phones as well as AI. The details are in the comparison of church translation apps, Koine vs OneAccord and Koine vs LiveVoice.

This is machine translation, and we do not claim Koine translates better than the others. Try it with your own preacher before deciding. Conversations with medical, legal or contractual consequences need a qualified interpreter.

6. Translated captions on the church screen

Translated text can also appear on the screen you use for songs and slides. Koine adds captions as a browser source in ProPresenter, EasyWorship, OBS or vMix, or as a desktop overlay over PowerPoint and Keynote, from the Standard plan at USD 169 a month. Glossa, Sunflower AI, OneAccord and Hope Translator also name ProPresenter. A shared screen has room for little text, so it works when most of the people who need help read the same language. The ProPresenter guide covers the setup.

What matters whichever you choose

• The sound decides. An interpreter who only hears the pastor across the room starts at a disadvantage, and so does an app listening through a phone at the back. Give both a line from the soundboard: which mix to send.
• Say it from the front, every week. Tell people where the receivers or the QR code are, in both languages. A sign by the door alone is easy to miss.
• Earbuds. Translated speech has to go through earbuds or the person beside you hears it too. Keep a box of cheap ones at the entrance.
• One person in charge. Someone checks the sound before the service, starts the translation, and charges and counts the receivers. Koine is run by one person from the web console or the booth app.
• Bible readings. Show the reference on screen so people can open their own Bible or app. With Koine, BibleSense shows the passage in each listener's own published translation, after the booth approves it.
• Privacy. Religious belief is a special category of personal data under the GDPR. With Koine, recording is off by default, and with temporary retention no transcript line is written to the database. Live audio is relayed through Amsterdam and accounts are stored in Stockholm; speech recognition and translation run at OpenAI and Google, which may process them outside the EU.