Farsi-speaking listeners in a German-speaking church

Many churches in Austria and Germany have the same Sunday: a German sermon, and a group of Persian-speaking members who came for the community and stay for the coffee, because the sermon itself passed them by. A whispered interpreter in the back row, a friend translating into an ear, a printed summary handed out on Tuesday. We run the translation in a congregation where this is the weekly reality, and this is what changed.

What the listener gets

The listener opens a page on their own phone, chooses Farsi, and hears the sermon as it is preached, under a second behind the speaker, in a natural voice that keeps the preacher's tone and rhythm. Not a subtitle to read while trying to watch the preacher; a voice in the ear, so the eyes stay on the front. Captions are there too for anyone who prefers to read, and for the moment a name is unclear.

What Farsi needs that English does not

Persian is not a hard language for a machine to speak. It is a hard language for a machine to hear, because Bible names, place names and church words arrive in a German sentence in a shape no dictionary expects. "Bethlehem", "Nikodemus", "Gnade" — each has a settled Persian form that a Persian-speaking Christian knows and a generic engine does not.

So the work is the glossary: the church's own list of how it says things, approved by someone who speaks both languages, read by the translation before every service. It is not a big list. Thirty or forty entries carry most of a year's sermons, and it grows by a handful after each Sunday.

What the church has to get right

• The microphone. The translation hears what the sound desk hears. A preacher who walks away from the microphone is untranslated for those seconds, in every language.
• Pauses. Farsi puts the verb at the end of the sentence. A sentence that ends is a sentence that can be spoken; a preacher who runs three sentences into one gives the translation nowhere to breathe. A breath at the full stop is enough.
• The first announcement, in Farsi. Ask a Persian-speaking member to say the first "scan the code, choose Farsi" from the front. It lands differently.

What it costs a church

Farsi is one language on the plan like any other; a church that translates one service a week into one language sits inside the smallest plan. The exact numbers are on the pricing page and nowhere else.

The part nobody plans for

The family that could not follow now argues about the sermon on the way home. That is the point of the whole thing, and it happens on the first Sunday.