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Notes on live translation

Practical ideas, feature deep-dives and real-world use cases for churches, conferences and events running live translation.

When a Visiting Team Arrives and Nobody Shares a Language

A team flies in for a week. The first two days are usually spent discovering how little can be communicated.

Most of these have answers that are easy to check and awkward to give. That is what makes them useful.

Boards do not reject translation because they are against it. They reject it because nobody put a number and an outcome in front of them.

Greek, English, Russian, Romanian, Filipino, Arabic, Ukrainian — often in one congregation. A specific look at a specific island.

Most churches try to do everything in week one and quietly stop by week five. A slower plan works better.

A second site multiplies the volunteers, the equipment, and the ways it can go wrong. It does not have to multiply the cost.

The moment you archive a service you are storing personal data about the people in it. Here is the short, practical version.

Churches often run translation for a year without knowing if three people or thirty are reading it. The numbers are usually surprising.

A public archive is good for reach and bad for the Sunday someone shares something painful. Both can be true.

A short quiz after the service changes how people listen during it — and shows you which parts actually landed.