Frequently asked questions about live church translation

Four plans, all priced in hours of live service — the wall-clock time from when you press Start to when you press Stop, counted once no matter how many languages translate simultaneously. Starter is $39/mo for 6 hours and 2 translated languages. Growth is $89/mo for 12 hours and 4 translated languages (+$9/mo per extra language) — the plan most churches pick. Pro is $199/mo for 30 hours and 6 translated languages (+$9/mo per extra language). VIP is $499/mo for 30 hours with every language we support unlocked. On every plan, time past your included hours bills at $4.50/hr. Each plan also includes free live captions in your speaker's own language, which never count against your translated-language allowance.

Starter covers a church running one Sunday service a week — 4 Sundays at ~75 minutes each is 5 hours, inside the 6 included (a longer month simply bills $4.50 for each extra hour). Growth adds hours and languages for multi-service Sundays plus midweek gatherings. Pro is the big bundle — 30 hours and 6 languages — for churches running daily services, conferences, or multiple long events. VIP exists for the one thing the other three can't do: open every language at once (up to 25 simultaneously) for a conference or a genuinely multi-ethnic congregation. Both engines — the default Natural Voice (V2) and Live Interpreter (V1) — are available on every plan. You can switch plans at any time from the Billing page (for VIP, email us).

A language-hour is one translated language, with someone actually listening to it, live for one hour. Six languages running for a 90-minute service is 9 language-hours — but still only 1.5 service hours.

Only VIP counts them, and only because of what VIP sells. Every other plan caps the number of languages (2, 4 or 6), which is what keeps a flat price honest. VIP removes that cap entirely, and 97 languages running for 30 hours is a genuinely different amount of work — so VIP includes 150 language-hours a month and bills $3.00 per language-hour past that. In practice 150 goes a long way: it covers all 30 service hours with 5 languages live throughout, and most conferences run far fewer languages than they enable, because you only pay for the ones people are actually listening to.

Yes — every new church gets its first 4 hours of live service time free, with full platform access and nothing charged. That's typically two to four full Sunday services to validate the platform against your real congregation before money changes hands. The trial ends when you've used the 4 hours or after 14 days, whichever comes first — then your plan's normal monthly billing begins. Stripe collects a payment method at signup; the card-on-file is what lets billing start seamlessly when the trial ends, with no interruption mid-service. Running out of trial hours never cuts off a live service — it simply asks you to start your plan before the next one.

Nothing dramatic — translation never stops mid-service. Hitting your cap is a billing event, not an interruption: time past your included hours simply bills at $4.50/hr, prorated to the minute, on your next invoice. On every plan with an hour bundle — Starter, Growth, Pro and VIP — we email you at about 80% of your bundle, and the Billing page shows your hours in real time on every plan. If you're regularly going over, moving up a plan is usually cheaper — one click from the Billing page (for VIP, email us).

No. Captions in your speaker's language (your source language) are free and always included on every plan — they're generated as a side-effect of the translation pipeline anyway. When a plan says it "includes N translated languages," that counts the output languages — so a Russian-source church translating to English + Spanish has 2 translated languages; an English-source church translating to Russian + Spanish also has 2. The source-language captions are bundled free on top.

Yes. Any listener can select the original language on their phone and get live captions of the service in the speaker's own words — no translation has to be involved at all. For the room, the on-screen captions page puts the same live text on a lobby TV, an in-room monitor, or a ProPresenter slide. Source-language captions are included on every plan, so this works even if nobody in your congregation needs a second language.

That's fine — pick any of 98 languages as your source during signup. Whatever your speaker preaches in becomes the "original": listeners see captions in that language and can pick from any translation languages you've enabled (English, Spanish, Mandarin — whatever your congregation needs). Common patterns we already support: Russian-speaking congregations needing English / Ukrainian for second-gen attendees; Spanish-speaking congregations needing English for non-Hispanic guests; Korean-speaking congregations with English-only spouses. The AI auto-detects your speaker's words — you just tell us once during onboarding which language they preach in, so we label the captions correctly and bill the right languages as "translations."

98 languages with Natural Voice (V2) — our default and the engine most churches use — each one fully supported as both a source and a target, from Spanish, Korean, and Mandarin to Amharic, Punjabi, and Zulu. On any plan you can also switch to our Live Interpreter (V1) engine with its 13 officially supported languages — English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Indonesian, Vietnamese. Add or drop any language from the dashboard at any time.

How many you can run is set by your plan: 2 on Starter, 4 on Growth and 6 on Pro (+$9/mo each beyond on either), and on VIP all 97 — every language in the roster except the one your speaker is already preaching in — with up to 25 live simultaneously.

Accuracy on doctrinal speech is generally very good. The default Natural Voice (V2) engine offers all 98 languages. Accuracy varies by language pair, audio conditions and content; test your service languages before relying on them. On the optional Live Interpreter (V1) engine, quality is strongest across its 13 officially supported languages. The engines handle scriptural references (book chapter:verse), proper nouns (your pastor's name), and church-specific terminology ("the elders," "communion," "the body of Christ") well. Like all current AI, they sometimes choose imperfect words on edge cases.

Yes, with Steady voice (an add-on on Starter and Growth, included with Pro and VIP) (and on Studio Voice, currently with select churches). Both follow a per-church Keywords list: boost the names, places and terms the translator should get right (your pastor's name, ministry names, uncommon Scripture references), block words you never want to appear, and pin the exact wording your church uses for a term in a given language (in Russian, "service" as служение rather than служба). The standard Natural Voice and Live Interpreter engines translate speech directly and can't apply written guidance, though in practice they already handle names, places and Scripture references well. A term keeps coming out wrong? Email help@churchtranslator.ai.

Both words describe what listeners experience: the speaker preaches, and a few seconds later each phone hears and reads the message in its own language — the job a simultaneous interpreter in a booth used to do. There is no human interpreter, no interpretation equipment to rent, and no FM receivers or headsets to hand out and collect: the AI engines translate the live audio, and listeners use the phones already in their pockets. Churches that have a volunteer interpreter keep them — many use us for the languages the volunteer doesn't speak.

Start from the dashboard and choose the Mac app, Windows app (beta), or browser capture. Sign in or open the secure browser-capture link, select the audio source from your booth, and print the QR code from the dashboard. Your listeners scan it, pick a language, and start listening. The exact setup time depends mostly on how your sound system exposes its audio output.

A Mac or Windows booth computer for the desktop capture app, or a computer with a supported browser for browser capture. You also need a clean sermon-audio source — commonly a USB audio interface or line output from the sound system — and a stable internet connection.

No. The listener experience is a web page — they scan the QR code, pick their language, tap play. Works on every iPhone and Android made in the last 5 years, plus iPads and laptops. No app store install, no permissions besides audio playback, no account creation.

Yes, though no one needs it: listening works in any phone's browser. People who come every week can get the free ChurchTranslator.AI app for iPhone and iPad from the App Store. It scans your QR code, remembers their church and language, and opens the captions full screen. Your team's own iPhone app (the phone as the microphone, a booth remote and the dashboard) is coming to the App Store. See the iPhone app page.

Yes. Every pair of Meta glasses plays the translation like headphones. With Meta Ray-Ban Display, listeners can also put live captions in the lens: on your listener page they tap “Wearing Meta glasses?”, then “Add captions to my glasses”. There's nothing for your church to set up. Details on the Meta glasses page.

Audio isn't stored unless your church turns on Service Replay; then each service is deleted 48 hours after it ends. Without it, translation audio is processed in real time — once a segment is delivered to listeners it's discarded server-side. We keep aggregate usage metrics (service hours, listener counts) for billing. The Mac and Windows capture apps can optionally save translated-audio recordings to a folder the operator chooses on that computer. Those local files are controlled by the church and are not uploaded to a ChurchTranslator.AI recording archive.

No. The listener page asks nothing beyond which language to play.

Audio flows through our infrastructure on Fly.io (translation, capture endpoints) and our real-time translation engine (Translation V1, Translation V2, or Translation V3 Studio Voice, your church's choice). All of them operate under terms that don't train on this audio. See our privacy policy for the full picture.

Yes, any time from the dashboard's Languages page. Starter includes 2 translated languages — swap them freely, no charge, or move to Growth for more. Growth includes 4 and Pro includes 6; each language beyond that is $9/mo on either. Adding or removing one mid-cycle is prorated automatically by Stripe, and you see the credit/charge on your next invoice. VIP has no language cap at all. No support ticket needed.

None of these counts include captions in your speaker's own language — those are free on every plan and never take a slot.

Yes — one click from the Billing page (for VIP, email us). The dashboard shows the exact changes + projected new monthly cost before you confirm. Upgrades take effect immediately (your included hours bump right away, and Stripe prorates the difference on your next invoice). Downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing period, so you keep the hours and languages you already paid for until then.

Open the Stripe Customer Portal from the Billing page and click Cancel. Translation service stays live until the end of your current billing cycle; after that, listener URLs return a friendly "not active" page. No cancellation fee, no minimum term.

Yes — Audio Dubbing turns a service recording into one translated audio track per language, timed to your video and spoken in your church's Studio Voice, ready for YouTube's multi-language audio feature. If the service streamed through ChurchTranslator, generate tracks straight from its transcript; otherwise upload the recording. It costs $0.10 per minute of generated audio on your next invoice, and runs on the Studio Voice engine (currently with select churches — email us to enable it). Details on the Audio Dubbing page.

Yes, with Service Replay on Growth and up. Turn it on in the dashboard, and for 48 hours after each service anyone with your listener link can replay it in every language that was heard live (and any your church chose to always record), with the room's sound under the translation or the room on its own. Worship songs are left out, and someone who arrives late can start the service from the beginning. Each recording is deleted after 48 hours.

The listener page changes from live to waiting when the server no longer sees a capture stream. Re-open or reconnect the Mac app, Windows app, or browser capture and translation delivery resumes; listeners do not need to reload their page.

Yes — on Growth and above, one account covers every campus: one login, one bill, one pool of hours. Each campus gets its own link and QR code, its own capture computers, speaker language and schedule, and campuses run at the same time — up to 3 live at once on Growth, 5 on Pro and 8 on VIP. A room that shows another campus's service on a screen can play that stream under its own link at no extra cost. Set it up under Dashboard → Campuses.

Yes — Custom Domain is built in. Set the hostname in the dashboard, add a CNAME at your DNS provider, click Verify. Free TLS certificate, issued automatically. Walkthrough takes about 5 minutes; DNS propagation 1–10 minutes.