Live Friday khutbah translation for your masjid

First decide whether you need a translation of a prepared text or a live translation of the speaker. A prepared translation can be checked by a qualified bilingual reviewer before anyone reads it. Live machine translation shows its mistakes before anyone can check them.

Agree the approach with your imam, test the real language combination and audio setup, and review the result before inviting worshippers to use it. If live translation is the right fit, the rest of this page explains how PewTranslate does it and where it falls short.

Whether worshippers may follow a translation on a phone during the khutbah is a question for your imam and the scholars your masjid consults, not for software. If your masjid approves, worshippers should open the page and choose their language before the khutbah begins, silence notifications and use text-only mode. Audio through earphones should be used only if the masjid approves it, and kept inaudible to others.

1. A volunteer opens the console on a laptop connected to the masjid's sound system or a microphone, chooses the language the imam speaks and presses Start.
2. Worshippers scan the masjid's QR code, posted at the entrance. The page opens in the phone's browser; no download and no account.
3. Each worshipper chooses one of the languages the masjid allows and taps Play to receive captions. The catalogue lists 106 languages and regional variants. Recognised speech is translated into text as it is processed; recognition and translation can make mistakes or miss words. Spoken playback depends on the voices the phone has, and a few languages are text-only. If a translation fails, the page may show the original text marked as untranslated.

The step-by-step screens are on how it works.

Choose a supported speaker language before starting. Live recognition supports Arabic, English, Urdu, Bengali, Turkish, Indonesian, Malay and Persian, among other languages. Some languages listed in the console, including Swahili, are not yet supported for live recognition.

The console also offers a multilingual mode, but how well it follows an imam who moves between Arabic and another language has not been measured for khutbahs. The speaker language cannot be changed while the stream is running: stop the stream before changing it. Test your exact language combination first.

PewTranslate does not identify Quran verses or show a published translation of their meanings. What appears during recitation is unverified machine-generated text and can be wrong. Do not rely on it as a translation of the Quran or as a source of religious guidance. Before using it with a congregation, ask the imam or a qualified reviewer to compare a test transcript with a published translation your masjid accepts.

Terms such as salah, taqwa, dhikr and sunnah may be translated, transliterated or left as they are, depending on the language. Our guide to checking sermon translation errors gives a simple method for reviewing a test transcript.

If your masjid needs published translations of Quran verses, mention it in your early-access request. That is not available today.

PewTranslate charges US$5 per hour of recognised speech for each language that someone is listening to. Billable time uses the speech recognition provider's segment timings, which can include brief pauses. Time is rounded up to the next whole minute separately for each language in each stream. Thirty billable minutes in each of two languages costs US$5.00. More worshippers listening in the same languages do not change the price. See pricing.

Accounts are not open yet. New accounts will receive US$20 of free credit after email verification, once per email address.

• A qualified interpreter can handle religious terms and context; quality, availability and cost depend on the interpreter and the language.
• A headset system carries audio to receivers; it does not translate the khutbah by itself, and still needs an interpreter.
• PewTranslate covers several languages at once on worshippers' own phones at a low cost, with the accuracy limits of machine translation.

• It is machine translation. It can miss names, idioms and religious terms, and it does not handle Quran recitation specially.
• The laptop and every worshipper's phone need an internet connection.
• Translations appear on phones only; screens in the prayer hall are not supported yet.
• Arabic, Urdu and Persian translations read right to left on the phone.

Tell us which languages your imam uses, which translations your community needs, and any requirements about phone use or Quran quotations. Accounts are not open yet, and accuracy during a real khutbah has not been measured. Request early access.