More Than Words: Translation, Community, and Audio
When we talk about live translation, it's natural to think of a solution like the UN—a live audio feed piping a perfect translation straight into your ear. Many people ask, "What about the audio output?". It seems like the "gold standard". But we've found that in a church setting, where the goal isn't just to transfer information but to build a community, the picture is much more nuanced.
Try free this SundayThe Problem with an Audio "Bubble"
The most important thing in a service is often not just what is said, but how it's said. Is the speaker sharing a joke? Are they speaking with serious, pastoral care? So much of the meaning is carried in the tone, timing, and emphasis of the original speaker. When you're enclosed in a text-to-speech audio feed, you miss all of that. You're disconnected from the feeling in the room and the friendliness of the person speaking. You might get the words, but you risk missing the heart.
At this current stage of technology, that process strips out the original emotion and emphasis. That stripped-out nuance can never be fully put back in by a text-to-speech engine.
The Surprising Power of Reading
We've found that a better experience for many is actually reading the translation while listening to the original speaker. This is how many people learn a new language—like reading subtitles while listening to the original audio. It's an active, engaging way to participate. One user from iHarvest church noted that their members prefer reading the captions, as it helps them improve their English and "feel more incorporated into the atmosphere".
Our Missional Choice: Affordability for All
This focus on captions over audio isn't just a design choice; it's a deliberate, missional decision to make Breeze Translate accessible to everyone. The most advanced, high-quality text-to-speech models run on powerful servers that cost a lot of money to run. Implementing them would multiply the cost of the service by four to five times. We see that as a prohibitive barrier. Our goal is a global mission.
The Technical Choice: Simplicity for Everyone
We've also chosen to keep our technology simple and straightforward to keep costs low and make the service easy to use. We do offer text-to-speech that runs on your device. This works very well on Android and iOS and supports over 60 languages.
Setup instructions are available for both platforms.
View setup instructions →The Future: What's Next for Audio?
With all that said, text-to-speech is on our roadmap. We can see this technology coming in time, and we will be on the lookout as new technologies arrive. In fact, we have deliberately designed our technology stack to enable us to make the most of the latest technologies. A perfect example is our recent move to a new multilingual transcription engine that will understand 60 languages without any prompting.
We are also actively investigating an option, particularly for Farsi (Persian), which we know is a language we get asked about.
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