Preaching for translation: six habits

The translation hears what the microphone hears

Whether your words go to an interpreter or to live translation on a phone, the translation can only be as clear as the sound and the sentence it receives. These six habits help every kind of translation, and most of them make a sermon easier to follow for everyone else in the room too.

1. Keep the microphone close and steady. Turning away from a fixed pulpit microphone makes your voice rise and fall. A headset or lapel microphone moves with you. Keep notes and hands away from your mouth.
2. Let sentences finish. A complete sentence carries its own context. Trailing off and restarting leaves a fragment to translate. If you change direction, pause and start the new thought cleanly.
3. Prefer short sentences to nested ones. "We often misunderstand grace. We assume it must be earned. But grace is given freely." Three sentences travel further than one sentence with three clauses folded inside it.
4. Pair an idiom with its plain meaning. "At slå to fluer med ét smæk" rarely survives word for word. Say it, then say what you mean.
5. Say names and references clearly. Give the book, chapter and verse before you read. Enter the names that recur in your church (the church itself, your pastors, a school or a series) once in your settings, to help the translation recognise and preserve them.
6. Leave a breath at the turns. A short pause between points marks where one thought ends. It helps the listener in the next row as much as the listener in another language.

Watch it once

The first time, ask someone to follow the subtitles on a phone while you preach, or read a passage aloud and watch them yourself. You will see quickly which phrases come through cleanly and which stumble, and you will adjust without trying.

You don't need to preach differently

None of this asks you to slow to a crawl or strip the colour from your preaching. Quote English when it is the right word; the spoken language is detected as it changes. The aim is a clear signal, not a different sermon. For the setup side, see microphone setup and sound from your mixer.