Interpreter or AI: when a church should keep its interpreter

A church that has an interpreter has something precious: a person who knows the preacher, the congregation and the jokes. The question is not whether a machine replaces them. It is which Sundays, which languages and which parts of the service each one should carry.

Keep the interpreter when

• The interpreter is the pastor to that group. In many congregations the person translating into Farsi or Ukrainian is also the one who visits, prays and baptises. The translation is a small part of what they do from that seat, and the seat should stay.
• The service is a conversation. A wedding, a baptism, a question-and-answer evening, a prayer meeting where people speak from the floor. A machine translates a speaker; it does not manage a room.
• The language is rare in the room and rich in the interpreter. One Armenian family and a fluent Armenian member: that is a friendship, not a workload.

Use the machine when

• There is no interpreter. The obvious case, and the most common one. A church with English-speaking students and no English-speaking member who can commit to every Sunday.
• The interpreter is tired. Consecutive interpretation doubles the length of a sermon; simultaneous interpretation for forty minutes is a professional skill that burns out volunteers. The machine does not get tired at minute thirty-five.
• More than two languages. Two interpreters is a rota; five is impossible. The machine speaks the fifth language as readily as the first, under a second behind the speaker, in a natural voice that keeps the preacher's tone and rhythm.
• Someone was absent. The Sunday the interpreter is ill is the Sunday the group is left out. A machine on standby costs nothing on the Sundays it is not used.

How the two share a Sunday

The pattern that works in the congregations we know: the interpreter keeps the conversations — the welcome, the prayer ministry, the pastoral moment after the service — and the machine takes the sermon, which is the long, one-directional, exhausting part. The interpreter also owns the glossary: the list of how this church says things in its languages, which the machine reads before every service. That turns years of judgement into something that does not vanish on holiday.

What to watch

Ask the interpreter to listen to the machine's translation for one Sunday with the group. They will hear what is wrong faster than any dashboard, and what they hear goes into the glossary. A church that does this once has a better translation the following week, and an interpreter who is a supervisor rather than a spare part.