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Church Translation & Accessibility
Church Translation System for Worship Services
Create foretastes of God’s Kingdom in your church by including many languages.
“After this I looked and saw a multitude too large to count, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” (Rev 7:9)
Why church translation?
Belonging
Create belonging in your church across cultures, languages, abilities, and generations.
Worship
Help people worship God in their heart languages, together as one body.
Witness
Witness God uniting people of every nation, tribe, and language through your church.
Church translation solution for every ministry
From church plants to multi-site churches, spf.io adapts to different ministry needs, service formats, and language requirements. Find your church type to see how it fits.
Want to dive deep into church translation?
Check out our comprehensive pastor’s guide to multilingual ministry or download a 1-page PDF to print and share.
“When we first started doing it, there was one woman who had been coming for six months, is not a believer, but loved the way she was loved, she just really appreciated being prayed over, but she didn’t understand a whole lot of what was going on until the first time we did spf.io. And the whole time I was preaching, she was like, elbowing the person next to her and smiling and nodding and pointing at the screen, and at the end of the service, she said, This is the first time I felt included.“
– Pastor Chris Sicks
Founder of One Voice Fellowship
“Whereas before, maybe we can only have 20 people listening, now, it’s unlimited. Before we could only have two languages broadcast at a time, [and] now it is over 60 languages. Before, you needed a human translator per language group, but now you need one operator for 60 languages.“
– Briana Southerland
Share Ministries Pastor at First Alliance Church, Calgary
“It was very easy to set up, and the quality is great.
I was also surprised at how little lag there is.“
– Cameron D.
Staff at Overlake Park Presbyterian Church
Ethnic churches offer a vital space for immigrants and refugees to feel at home. As these churches grow, they face the challenge of engaging younger generations who may feel disconnected from their parents’ language and traditions. As third culture kids, they face unique challenges in upholding their heritage while integrating with the majority culture.
“I got to say, we’re very pleased. Our people like the way that it works. We’ve been able to put together a sequence of events that we run through each week of how we stick the information into the program, edit the translations, and then get it ready for presentation on Sunday. And people seem to be pretty quick to adopt using their handhelds and reading through the sermon as we go, so it’s been great.”
– Todd Blackhurst
Pastor at Taichung International Fellowship
“It makes voting so easy [and] convenient. I’m really grateful that we’re using this platform. [It’s] easy to count votes, easy to keep the meeting moving, and to incorporate in a hybrid model where we have people in person and online.”
– Rev. Lora East
Associate Pastor at Pacific Presbytery
“With the spf.io Convo app, now we’re able to have multiple people on a call in a group setting where we’re speaking different languages, even more than two, and we’re able to actually share our experiences, faith, and cultural expressions with one another.”
– Pastor Steven Zapolski
Founder of United Community Church
Want to dive deep into church translation?
Check out our comprehensive pastor’s guide to multilingual ministry or download a 1-page PDF to print and share.
What can you do with spf.io?
Here are four capabilities you can get from our all-in-one church translation system.
Make worship services accessible in 100+ languages
Make worship services accessible in 100+ languages
Deliver live AI translation, captions, and audio for in-person, online, or hybrid worship services. Display captions and translations on big screens and people’s mobile devices, or embed them on your website, app, or livestream.
Stream your interpreter’s audio or assistive listening directly to people’s smartphones or embed it on your website and apps without extra equipment.
Translate your slides and songs with just a few clicks. From one control, easily show slides and songs on big screens and on people’s mobile devices in their language.
Quickly translate sermon recordings & other content
Translate sermon recordings and church content
Add captions and subtitles to your audio and videos in many languages, all in one place. Edit them to perfection and export to multiple formats.
Automatically translate documents such as articles, sermon manuscripts, handouts, training materials, and dockets in many languages. Manage your content & translation team in one place.
Automatically translate your polls so people can vote in their own language for in-person, virtual, or hybrid meetings.
Connect people through Bible studies & small groups in many languages
Connect people through Bible studies & small groups in many languages
Create belonging for people in many languages by providing real time translation & captions of Bible studies, prayer meetings, and 1:1 conversations. Let people pray and speak freely in their heart language while being understood by their neighbors.
Grow your multilingual community
Grow your multilingual community
Review engagement metrics to understand which languages congregants use and how people engage with translated content. Use these insights to inform your ministry’s language-access strategy.
How live sermon translation works
Here’s how spf.io can provide live translation during your worship service.
Deliver your sermon
Preach from a manuscript or speak freely into a microphone/audio input connected to spf.io.
Display on mobile devices
People can see slides, read or listen to the translation, and easily share quotes on social media.
Display on a big screen
Projector views can show up to four translated languages as well as slides or video.
Display on a live stream
Embed the audience view side-by-side with your live stream or as subtitles beneath your video on your website.
Deliver your sermon
Preach from a manuscript or speak freely into a microphone/audio input connected to spf.io.
Display on mobile devices
People can see slides, read or listen to the translation, and easily share quotes on social media.
Display on a big screen
Projector views can show up to four translated languages as well as slides or video.
Display on a live stream
Embed the audience view side-by-side with your live stream or as subtitles beneath your video on your website.
Connect church translation to your existing tools
Spf.io works with the livestreaming, video conferencing, and church platforms your church already uses, including YouTube, Zoom, OBS, StreamYard, ProPresenter, and the Rock mobile app. Cloud Loopback routes the audio of multiple speakers into spf.io to generate captions.
Built for accuracy in church contexts
We believe God’s Word matters. Spf.io offers tools and services to help you reach the translation quality your community needs.
Human-in-the-loop tools
Captioner
Manuscript mode
Audio livestreaming
Review and edit captions in real time to ensure accuracy. Your corrections help the AI produce higher quality captions and translations over time.
AI adaptation tools
Vocabulary fine-tuning
Fine-tune spf.io’s language AI to your church’s vocabulary.
Custom AI models
Build custom AI models based on your church’s needs.
Improve recognition of church terminology
Use the Keyword Booster to enhance speech recognition of church-specific terminology to get more accurate transcriptions. Keyword groups for different chapters in the Bible in English are available to boost so you don’t have to input each Biblical term manually. Learn how to enable this feature in your session.
Maintain consistent names and terminology
A Do Not Translate list keeps church names, ministry names, and key terms from being translated in your transcriptions, media files, and conversations.
Create safer captions and translations
Profanity Filter blocks offensive or inappropriate words across many languages from appearing in your transcriptions. Customize settings to fit your church’s needs.
Custom glossary
Automatically replace incorrect variations of recurring ministry terms, names, and phrases across captions, translations, and documents with Autoreplacements.
Professional services and training
Whether your team is experienced or volunteer-led, spf.io offers services to support your multilingual ministry.
On-call Support & Remote Operators
We’ll monitor and assist your team in addressing potential technical issues during your event. Request one of our trained remote operators to review and edit captions in real time.
Event Preparation & Tech Checks
Our customer support team will assist you or your operator to set up spf.io and ensure everything runs smoothly before your event.
Multilingual Strategy Consulting & Training
Our instructor-led training equips your team to get maximum benefit from our platform. You can dive deep with our strategy consultants to grow your multilingual community.
Translation & Transcription Services
Request one of our post-editors to review and refine translation for documents, slides, and audio and video transcription.
Professional Captioners and Interpreters
We provide professional interpreters and captioners trained to use spf.io’s assisted captioning feature or CART to translate captions into many languages automatically.
AI Customization
We can build custom AI models for speech recognition, machine translation, voice replication and more. Let us know your vision for AI and we can help make it possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does spf.io cost?
Pricing depends on your usage, such as the number of languages, worship services, and attendees. It’s significantly more affordable than traditional headset systems, where you need to purchase and maintain separate equipment for each person. With spf.io, attendees simply use their own smartphones, making it easy and cost-effective to scale up as your multilingual needs grow.
We offer tailored quotes so you can choose a solution that fits your ministry. Our team can help you compare available options, from automated live captions and translated audio to human-assisted workflows and content translation.
What equipment do we need and who runs it?
A typical worship service needs one to two people to operate spf.io, and we train your staff and volunteers before your first service or event. Here are the minimum technical equipment requirements to use spf.io’s live church translation system:
- Processor: 1.6 GHz Dual-core CPU
- Memory: 4GB RAM / 4GB Free disk space
- Browser: Support for Google Chrome 80
- Operating System: Windows 10 or later, MacOS Mojave or later, or Chrome OS 90 or later
- Network: 1 Mbps download/upload Internet connection speed (when the network is in use during a live event). Test venue internet with an internet speed test.
- Audio: Ability to receive audio input over USB. Learn more about the audio setup here.
These requirements apply to spf.io operators, interpreters, and other producer roles.
Contact us if you have any questions about these requirements.
How accurate is AI church translation?
Accuracy depends on audio quality, the speaker, and the language pair. You can improve results by uploading your manuscript in advance, using a human operator who corrects captions live, and loading church vocabulary with Keyword Booster, Do Not Translate, and a custom glossary.
You can choose from four translation methods:
- Autopilot: automatic AI captions and translations in real time.
- Manuscript: upload your script and release the translation line by line.
- Supervised AI: a human edits real-time captions for higher quality. A remote operator can do this for you.
- Interpreter subtitling: stream your interpreter’s voice to spf.io and get it captioned automatically.
The advantage of using supervised AI and adding autoreplacements is that the AI can learn from any corrections you make to improve future translations.
If you prerecord a sermon that is played back during a worship service, you can use our AVCS product to automatically caption and translate it for playback.
Which languages are supported, and what if someone needs one I haven’t prepared?
Spf.io supports 100+ languages for live captioning and translation, 80+ languages for document, video, and slide translation, 70+ languages for text-to-speech (audio translation), and 40+ languages for multilingual conversations.
Attendees pick their language on their own phones and headsets, so you don’t need to buy translation devices. If someone arrives who needs a language you did not prepare, turn on Translation on Demand and Autopilot. While there is no human in the loop, it gives them an understanding of your service.
See the full list on the Supported Languages page.
Does it work for multi-campus churches and other types of churches?
Yes. Spf.io can support multi-site workflows, with translations delivered through phones, screens, and supported livestreams. The right setup depends on your campuses, audio routing, service schedule, and language requirements.
First Alliance Church in Calgary has shared its experience offering translation in multiple languages for its two campuses. Read the story or listen to the podcast to learn more about its approach.
Our pastor’s guide explains how churches with several sites set up multilingual ministry.
Can I provide live captions for Deaf and hard-of-hearing congregants?
Yes. Live captions can be displayed on big screens, mobile devices, or supported livestreams. Churches can use AI-generated captions or explore professional captioning services, including supported CART workflows. The best setup depends on the accessibility needs of your congregation and the level of captioning accuracy required.
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Make your church accessible in any language!
Schedule a call to assess your needs and get a tailored multilingual solution for your church.