How to follow Mass in a language you don't speak

Canon 1248 §1 of the Code of Canon Law: the obligation is satisfied by taking part in a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite, on the day itself or on the evening before. The canon names place, rite and time, not language. (Code of Canon Law, cann. 1244–1253)

"Catholic rite" includes the Eastern Catholic Churches, whose liturgies are celebrated in many languages. It does not include liturgies of churches outside full communion. If you are unsure about a particular church, ask your own parish.

Preparation covers the first two groups. The homily is the one long part that no missal can give you, which is why it is the part people most often say they missed.

Parishes using the current Roman Missal follow one cycle of readings: a three-year cycle on Sundays and a two-year cycle on weekdays. On most days, the readings abroad are the ones listed for that date at home. In the United States, for example, they are published day by day at the USCCB daily readings. They can differ when:

• you go to a Saturday evening Mass: it is usually Sunday's Mass celebrated in advance, so prepare Sunday's readings; when a feast falls on that Saturday, the evening Mass can be a different one;
• the country has moved a holy day to a Sunday, or celebrates a national or local feast that day; check the diocesan calendar where you are, not the one at home;
• the Mass follows the 1962 Missal (the Traditional Latin Mass): it has its own calendar and a one-year cycle of readings, printed in the missal itself;
• the church is Eastern Catholic: its Divine Liturgy is a different text, so look for that liturgy in your language rather than the Roman Order of Mass.

Your Bible translation may also word a reading differently from the one read aloud. That is normal; the passage is the same.

Sources: USCCB, how the Lectionary cycles work and moving holy days to Sunday in the United States; Diocese of Albany, Saturday evening Masses; Catholic Answers, the 1962 Missal's calendar and readings; Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Phoenix, the Divine Liturgy.

A live translator app hears the priest through the phone's microphone and shows his words in your language as text, sentence by sentence. In a pew, read it silently or listen through earbuds:

1. Set both languages, turn the spoken voice off (or connect earbuds) and lower the brightness before Mass starts. Never let the phone speak through its loudspeaker in church.
2. Sit where the priest's voice is loud and clear, close to a loudspeaker.
3. Start when the homily begins, stop when it ends, and put the phone away for the rest of the Mass.
4. If you are unsure whether phones are welcome, ask an usher or the priest beforehand.

Expect mistakes: names, Scripture quotations and fast speech come out wrong more often, and singing and chant are not translated well. Read the day's Gospel in your language first, so you know what the homily is about. The trade-offs of phone translation compared with interpreters and headsets are on live translation vs. phone translator apps.

PewTranslate's personal translator runs in the phone's browser, with no app to install. It works when the priest speaks one of its 82 speaker languages; you choose that language, or let it detect it, and your own language from 106. Tap Start and each sentence appears on the screen. You can turn the voice off and read, show the original sentence under each translation, and enlarge the text. With the voice on and no earbuds, the microphone pauses while the phone reads a translation aloud; with earbuds, switch on "Earbuds connected".

It costs US$5 for each hour of speech it translates for you, billed by the minute. We have not tested it on homilies in a real church, so try it at home first: play a streamed Mass in the language you will hear, hold the phone at arm's length from the speaker, and check you can read along.

Accounts are not open yet. New accounts will start with US$20 of free credit, and you can ask for early access on the home page.