Before you invest in church translation technology, ask eight practical questions: what problem you're solving, what hardware you truly need, whether listeners must install anything, how it handles names and Bible terms, whether it keeps every word, how it serves older and hard-of-hearing members, what a typical service will cost, and whether it fits your congregation and connection. Church translation technology means any tool that carries a spoken message into other languages in real time, through an interpreter, a machine, or both. The stakes are real. In the United States alone, about 23% of people age 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home in 2024, according to the American Community Survey via USAFacts, and churches far beyond America face rooms just as mixed. A wrong purchase can leave a refugee family staring at the floor for an hour. The right one lets them hear the gospel in their heart language, as the crowd did at Pentecost in Acts 2.
- What problem are we actually trying to solve?
- What hardware do we really need to buy?
- Will listeners have to download or install anything?
- How accurate is it with names, places and Bible terms?
- Does it keep every word, or summarize when it falls behind?
- Will it serve older and hard-of-hearing members too?
- What will a typical service cost us?
- Does it fit our congregation, our building and our connection?
What problem are we actually trying to solve?
Start with the people, not the product. Before you compare any translation equipment for church use, picture who sits in your room on a Sunday and who is missing because they can't follow.
For some churches it's a handful of immigrant families. For others it's a conference with a dozen nations represented, or a missionary standing in a new field months before the language comes. Each of those needs something different.
If you serve in the United States, the national picture is worth knowing, though your own pews matter more than any average:
| Figure (United States, 2024) | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| People age 5+ speaking a language other than English at home | About 74.1 million (23%) | USAFacts / U.S. Census Bureau ACS |
| Non-English language groups spoken at home by more than a million people | 11 | USAFacts / U.S. Census Bureau ACS |
| State share where home language isn't English | 2.8% (West Virginia) to 45.3% (California) | USAFacts / U.S. Census Bureau ACS |
Outside the U.S., your national statistics office or simply a show of hands after the service will tell you more. Write down the languages. That list drives every other answer.
What hardware do we really need to buy?
Often, less than you think. Many churches assume worship translation means interpreter booths, transmitters and racks of receivers, and that assumption alone stops a lot of small congregations before they start.
What are the options with little or no hardware?
Ask any vendor whether you can start with what you already own. With Jesus Speaks, there are four ways to run a service:
- A single phone, with no extra hardware at all
- A laptop into your existing soundboard, sending translated audio out to the house speakers or your livestream
- Listeners on their own phones, reading and hearing their language directly
- Wireless listening receivers, often the headsets a church already owns for interpretation
When do receivers still make sense?
Receivers are one option among four, not the starting point. They help where phones aren't welcome in the sanctuary or where many listeners don't carry one. If you have an assistive-listening system already, it may accept the audio feed, but test it in your own building before relying on it.
Will listeners have to download or install anything?
They shouldn't have to, and this is one of the most important questions on any church tech buying guide. Every extra step at the door is a step where a nervous first-time visitor gives up.
With Jesus Speaks, listeners never install an app. They scan a QR code or open a link in any browser, pick their language, and then read live captions and hear a warm, natural spoken voice in that language. Listeners never pay and there's no cap on how many can join.
Think about who you're trying to reach: a grandmother newly arrived from abroad, a teenager with a nearly full phone, a guest whose phone is set to a language your welcome team can't read. A QR code on the screen or a printed card in the pew works for all of them. Ask any provider to show you the exact listener experience, from scan to first sentence, and time it.
How accurate is it with names, places and Bible terms?
Accuracy depends heavily on whether the tool knows your vocabulary. General-purpose translation tends to stumble over exactly the words that matter most in a sermon: Melchizedek, Capernaum, your pastor's surname, the name of your church plant, terms like propitiation or sanctification.
So ask: can we teach it our words? Jesus Speaks lets you upload sermon notes, glossaries and name lists before the service, so proper names, place names and ministry terms come through correctly. It's worth building a simple shared glossary over a few weeks. Add the books of the Bible you're preaching through, the names of your leaders and partner churches, and any phrases your congregation uses often.
You'll also want to know the language range. Jesus Speaks translates one speaker live into up to 87 listener languages at once, from 87+ in the catalog and 56 source languages. Check that the specific languages on your list are covered before you commit.
Does it keep every word, or summarize when it falls behind?
It should keep every word, and you should ask this directly. Live translation sometimes runs behind the speaker. Some systems respond by skipping ahead, which means listeners quietly miss parts of the message.
We built Jesus Speaks the other way. When playback falls behind, it speeds up rather than skipping, so the congregation hears the whole message, not a summary. For us that's a ministry conviction as much as an engineering choice. Paul said he became all things to all people so that by all possible means he might save some (1 Corinthians 9:22). A refugee in the third row deserves the same sermon as everyone else, including the illustration that lands and the invitation at the end.
When you test any tool, preach a full, fast-paced passage and then ask a bilingual member to compare what they heard with what was said.
Will it serve older and hard-of-hearing members too?
It can, if accessibility is part of your choosing translation tech church checklist from the start rather than an afterthought. Translation and accessibility overlap more than most leadership teams expect.
Ask whether there's a captions view that works for people who speak your language but struggle to hear. Jesus Speaks includes a side-by-side captions view for the hard of hearing, so a member can follow along on a phone or tablet in the same language the pastor is speaking. Older members who find small screens difficult may prefer a receiver or headset, which is one reason it helps to have several ways to run a service.
Also consider the parts of the service beyond the sermon. Quick Phrases let you send welcomes and announcements in every active language, so a visitor knows where the children's ministry meets and when the meal starts.
What will a typical service cost us?
With Jesus Speaks, a 1-hour service in 3 languages on the standard voice uses about 10.8 credits, where 1 credit equals €1. Your actual figure depends on how many languages you run and how many minutes are actually heard in each, because credits are prepaid and drawn down per language per minute.
That model matters for small churches. You aren't paying for languages nobody listened to, and listeners are never charged. When comparing options, ask every provider the same questions:
- Is pricing per seat, per event, per month or per minute?
- Do we pay for listeners, or only for languages?
- Are there hardware rental or purchase costs on top?
- What happens to unused credit or minutes?
The Jesus Speaks team prices for ministry, not margin, and offers scholarships and subsidies for ministries that need them. Premium voices, including one that can clone your pastor's own voice, cost more than the standard voice. You can see the details on our pricing page.
Does it fit our congregation, our building and our connection?
Fit comes down to three things: your people, your setup and your internet. A tool that works beautifully at a well-equipped conference center may fail in a rented school gym with patchy Wi-Fi.
Will it work on a weak connection?
Jesus Speaks runs on a simple cell-phone data connection, which matters for church plants, house churches and missionaries in places where reliable Wi-Fi isn't a given. The missionary who built it kept facing rooms full of people from many nations with no interpreter and no budget for booths, so it was shaped for exactly those conditions.
What about meetings outside Sunday?
Much ministry happens online now. Ask whether the tool covers prayer meetings, board calls and partner check-ins. Jesus Speaks also translates Zoom, Teams, Meet and Webex calls.
Who is it for?
Jesus Speaks is available only to Christian ministries that share our statement of faith. Revelation 7:9 pictures every nation, tribe, people and language before the throne, and we'd love to help your church taste a little of that now. Approved ministries can open an account and begin with €5 of starter credit, which is enough to run a real service and hear it for yourselves.