From one corner of the room

For years, we shared one room and one faith. But the message did not always reach everyone.

There was a wall between us that no one had built: language. Some people sat close enough to whisper the translation into one another’s ears, and every sentence had to pass through the pulpit twice. Sermons that moved people often fell silent when Sunday ended.

Some of those messages could have become a study guide, a booklet, or even a book. But they rarely lasted, and rarely crossed a language barrier. Valuable teaching in Farsi, Armenian, German, English, and many other languages remained inside one room simply because others could not understand it, and that loss went in every direction.

We could not accept that the message had to stop there. So we built, tested, and rebuilt.

Then we took Sanctavo beyond our home church, to a multilingual gathering in Thessaloniki. There, people who shared a faith but spoke different languages heard the same sermon at the same time, each in their own language.

Today, Sanctavo translates the message as it is preached and, after the service, helps turn it into a transcript, summary, study guide, booklet, or book draft, so that a church’s voice is not limited to one language or one Sunday.

Sanctavo began in one corner of that room, with a vision for a room that would no longer need that corner.

Barmak, an IT specialist for many years, could not accept that this was the best we could do. He arrived at live AI translation, pitched it to his son Arsha, and the two of them built, tested and rebuilt until Sanctavo existed: a translated voice under a second behind the speaker, captions that correct themselves, the sermon kept as transcript and manuscript, drafts for blog, newsletter and social media, Ask the Sermon, a memory that learns how your church speaks, first-time visitors, prayer requests and follow-up in one list, and Sanctavo Press, which turns a series into a book.

Barmak Shayan, founder