If your church is looking at offering interpreting, there are a few options. This article gives you a brief overview of what’s on offer and what works best. For a more detailed lowdown, check out chapters 10-13 of my book Multilingual Church.
Without further ado, let’s get into the main options.
Automated Speech Translation (aka Machine Interpreting)
The simplest option is just to get Google or Microsoft or spf.io or someone like that to do the interpreting for you. It’s cheap. It’s easy. It seems ideal but it really isn’t.
Absolutely every single automated speech translation app will strip out emotion, emphasis, intonation, any specialist words you use in your church and any sense of personal connection. In short, this method is only to be used when there are really no other alternatives.
Consecutive Interpreting
The next simplest method is to have someone stand next to whoever is speaking or signing and take turns with them. This means that the speaker says or signs something in their language, then the interpreter does the same in theirs and so on.
It is cheap, surprisingly effective and has the bonus of making language difference really obvious in the church.
It will, however, make everything around twice as long and is quite tricky to deliver without boring people.
The most you will need for this form of interpreting is a spare microphone and an interpreter per language. It can support a maximum of two languages at once (if your sound technicians know how to split sound into different speakers). This makes it very cheap but only suitable for a very small number of languages.
To ensure it is effective, make sure that the interpreter can practice first or that they have received some kind of professional training. Try to establish a rhythm early on and never interrupt the interpreter. Finally, work on the discipline of always finishing your sentence.
While there are no set guidelines for this kind of interpreting, it is likely that an experienced interpreter would tire after 30-45 minutes.
Simultaneous Interpreting
If you want interpreting without longer services, simultaneous interpreting is for you. It comes in two flavours.
Whispered interpreting
As the name suggests, whispered interpreting involves the interpreter or interpreters whispering into people’s ears. Obviously, this severely limits the number of people who can listen to the interpreter to no more than a handful. In addition, it tends to disturb anyone nearby.
It is a possible solution for small groups of people who speak different languages but is far from ideal. It also needs to be acknowledged publicly or else people will just think the interpreter is being rude.
In terms of costs, no new equipment needs to be bought. All the church needs to do is to find the space for the interpreters to work and for people to sit around them.
Simultaneous interpreting with technology
This can be covered in a single section, even though the options and choices involved could be an article on their own. There are two main options.
Churches can pay the large amounts of money necessary to buy in professional simultaneous interpreting booths, consoles and receivers. This is expensive, running into tens of thousands of pounds, dollars, and euros, but provides a complete solution, excellent conditions for the interpreters and reduces any leakage of sound to a minimum. If you have qualified interpreters in the church, this will be the solution they know best. As long as everything is setup properly, it should deliver excellent results. However, its cost puts it out of reach of all but the richest churches.
A much cheaper and more flexible solution is to use some kind of remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) system. These systems allow anyone to listen to the interpreting on any device that can browse the web and also allow the interpreters to be anywhere in the world. These tend to be much cheaper than booths and consoles, with each provider having their own pricing sheet.
RSI systems range from the very basic offerings of Zoom Professional (£129.90 per year), to simpler systems like LiveVoice, all the way to fully featured systems such as Interactio and Interprefy. Broadly speaking, the more expensive systems tend to offer features that make interpreting and especially changeovers between interpreters much simpler, while the cheaper options are simpler but require interpreters to communicate clearly with each other.
A church can use an RSI system as a cheaper way of having simultaneous interpreters in the building or they can use it to give them access to church interpreters around the world. All specialist RSI systems can be used to produce a second audio feed for platforms such as YouTube.
Any simultaneous interpreters using any technology will need a space to work that is as soundproofed as possible and should not be asked to interpret for more than about 30 minutes in one go. Long services really need two interpreters.
The technical specifications required for RSI varies for different platforms but a modern Ryzen 5 or 7/Intel Core i5 or i7 machine with at least 8Gb RAM and an internet connection speed of at least 8Mbps is going to manage with any solution. Having one computer them per language is a necessity. They should be wired directly to the internet router and not connected via WiFi. The interpreters should be using wired headsets or wired headphones and a wired microphone. If the interpreters are in the same room, one mic per language will be fine.
The Next Step?
After the interpreting is setup, the next step is working effectively with interpreters. That guide is coming soon, as is an infographic version of this post.