The QR card for a translated service: what to print on it

Print the code large, name the languages in their own script, and add one line about earphones. Everything else on the card is decoration.

The card is not a flyer. It has one job: to get a person who does not speak the language of the room from sitting down to hearing the sermon, without asking anyone for help. Everything on it either serves that or gets in the way.

What goes on the card

Four things, in this order.

The QR code, and it should be the biggest thing on the card. Leave the white margin around it alone — that quiet border is part of the code, and a designer who crops it to fit a layout has broken the card.

The languages, written in their own script. Not "translation available" and not a row of flag icons. A Persian speaker scanning a table of small European flags will not find themselves; a line that says فارسی · Українська · English is read instantly by exactly the person it is for, and ignored by everyone else. Flags are a bad idea for a second reason: a flag is a country, and the people you are trying to reach often have a complicated relationship with the one on the card.

One line about earphones. "Bring earphones, or ask at the welcome desk." We wrote a whole post about what to hand out and what to skip, but the card only needs the sentence.

A short web address under the code, for the phone whose camera will not focus. Make it something a person can type with one thumb.

That is the card. No logo bigger than the code, no explanation of how the technology works, no QR code that leads to the church's front page with the translation link somewhere inside it.

Where to put it

In the pew, not at the door. A card at the entrance is taken by the people who are comfortable enough to take things; the person who most needs it is often the one who came in late, sat at the back and did not look anybody in the eye. A card already lying where they sit asks nothing of them.

Put a stack at the welcome desk too, and give one to whoever is standing there, because the second question of the morning is always "where do I get that card".

Then put the same code on the screen at the front, at the announcements and again just before the sermon. The screen version has to survive the back row: make the code about a quarter of the screen height, keep it on a white panel, and leave it up long enough for a person to find their phone, unlock it, open the camera and aim. That is slower than it sounds — count to fifteen while looking at it.

What the card should say, word for word

Short. Here is the shape we use:

Hearing the service in your language [QR code] فارسی · Українська · English Bring earphones, or ask at the desk. yourchurch.org/live

Not "Scan for our multilingual experience." Not "Powered by AI." The person holding the card is deciding in about two seconds whether this is for them. "In your language" plus their own script answers that; a slogan does not.

If your church has a name people recognise, the name can go on the back. The front belongs to the code.

What we got wrong

Three Sundays of mistakes, in case they save you one.

We printed the first batch with the code on the back, so that the front could be pretty. People looked at the front, put the card down and never turned it over.

We laminated the second batch, which made the card shiny and the code hard to scan under the ceiling lights at an angle. Matte paper, always.

We printed a code that pointed at a page where the listener still had to choose the service before choosing a language. Every extra tap is a person who gives up. The code should land on the language list and nothing else.

And one that still catches us: the card is useless if nobody says the sentence from the front. The card reaches the people who read cards. Forty seconds of saying it out loud reaches the room.

How many to print

Fewer than you think for the pews — one per two seats in the sections where visitors actually sit — and more than you think for the desk, because they walk out in pockets and do not come back. They are cheap. Reprint when the languages change, and they will change: our own Sundays in Vienna run Farsi and Armenian now because that is who arrived, and the card had to follow.

Before next Sunday

Print one card. Take it to the back row on a Saturday, in the light you will actually have, and scan it with the oldest phone in the building. If it opens the language list in under five seconds, print the rest. If it does not, the card is not the problem — the page behind it is.

If you want to see what the listener sees before you print anything, the Sunday checklist walks through the whole morning, cable to card.