The four questions churches ask before they buy translation

It is almost always the same four questions, and not one of them is answered on a product page. They do not come from the tech team. They come from whoever keeps the church books and wants to know what happens in February.

Live church translation looks simple from outside: one QR code announced from the front, the sermon arriving on the listener's own phone in their language, a natural voice that keeps the preacher's tone and rhythm, under a second behind the speaker, captions alongside. None of that is what holds up a decision. What holds up a decision is how it adds up across fifty Sundays, no two of which are the same.

Can you pause the translation during the worship set?

This is the first question and the one that matters most, because otherwise half an hour of singing gets counted. In Vienna our translation starts after the songs. The lyrics are already on the screen in two languages, and translating a sung line helps nobody.

Two different things get confused here, and the difference is the whole answer. Stopping ends the session: everyone in the room has to scan the code again, and with forty people that is not a quiet thirty seconds. Pausing holds the connection open, the phones stay joined, and the meter does not run. Ask a vendor which of the two their button does. Ours is labelled "pause translation", it needs no reconnect, and it consumes no translation time while it is held.

In practice it is one press after the last song and one press when the preacher is introduced. That is the whole job for the volunteer at the desk.

How is a month counted when there are five Sundays in it?

This question always comes, and it rests on an assumption worth testing: that you are billed per Sunday. Our unit is the translated hour per month, not the service, so a five-Sunday month is not a special case. It is simply a month in which you use a few more hours.

Do the arithmetic for your own church before you sign anything anywhere. A service where translation starts after the songs realistically runs an hour. The average month has 4.35 Sundays. So five live language hours a month is tight if every Sunday is translated, and comfortable if two Sundays a month are. The figures live on our pricing page and nowhere else; the entry plan is EUR 49 a month for five live language hours in one language.

Ask one more thing while you are there: what happens if the hours run out mid-sermon. A service that cuts off because a counter filled is the worst thing a system like this can do. Ours does not cut off.

What do you do at Christmas, when it needs more hours than usual?

Christmas Eve, Good Friday, a baptism with family visiting from three countries. Those are the Sundays where a church suddenly needs double, and the real question is whether you can top up for one month without being parked in a bigger plan for a year.

Look closely here, with any vendor. With us, five more hours is EUR 25 a month on Starter and larger plans, and on Essential one extra hour is added at EUR 10. The number matters less than the direction: can capacity be added for a month and dropped again, or does one peak bind you to the rest of the year?

And put December's extra hour in the diary in November. Nobody wants to be changing a plan at four in the afternoon on Christmas Eve.

Can you still pick the language on Sunday morning?

The honest answer here: yes, when the service is created, and that can be the same morning. What you cannot do is switch languages in the middle of a service that is already running. If a Ukrainian family walks in at 9:50, you create the service with Ukrainian at 9:52. If they walk in at 10:25 with the sermon under way, they will read along this week and listen next week.

Which produces a habit worth more than any setting: somebody stands at the door and asks. Without that question you never learn which languages are actually in the room, and you end up buying languages on a hunch. The way to collect the answers is in visitor follow-up in several languages.

What else rides on the same code

These four questions are about the translation, which is why they come first. But the larger part of what a church uses every week hangs on the same QR code, and it is the part that gets overlooked while a decision is being made.

That same code carries Amen, first time here, a prayer request and a word to the team, for everyone present. After the blessing a second code opens the after-service screen for prayer, testimony and questions about the sermon, and every response lands in one follow-up list with a status per person. Within the hour the recording comes back as a clean transcript, a summary, the full message, a small-group guide and drafts for blog, newsletter and social, in every language the church serves. A teaching series becomes a study guide or a book through Sanctavo Press, and a recorded sermon comes back spoken in other languages through Video Dub. Ask the Sermon answers from what was actually preached and cites the passage, while Church Memory holds the names and terms your team has approved.

A church with one language uses all of that every week and switches translation on the Sunday a second language walks in. What is actually worth testing before you choose is set out in five things to settle before you pick translation.

What to do about it on Sunday

Take these four questions into the next vendor conversation, in these words, and have them answered in order. Anyone who responds to the pause question by explaining why it does not matter has not solved it.

Then put a stopwatch on one of your own services and find out how long anybody actually speaks between the last song and the final Amen. That single number answers the second and third questions by itself, and most churches come in well under what they assumed.

What it costs with us is published openly on our pricing page, with the hours per plan beside it. Whichever system ends up in the room is your call; the four answers are yours either way.