Read the service as it is spoken.

Anyone can pick the language that is being spoken from the list and read the service in it. The words appear as they are said, marked “Original”, with nothing translated.

That helps members who are hard of hearing, people who follow better by reading, anyone in a seat where the sound is poor, and newcomers still learning the language. In a church that switches languages, each person reads what was said in their own: the original when it is theirs, a translation when it isn’t. How language switching works.

The original words appear on every phone as the pastor speaks. How we test.

• Large text. Five sizes, from 20 to 42 px, chosen on the phone and remembered there.
• Dark for church, light for home. The page is black with warm text by default, so it doesn’t light up the room; a light page is one tap away.
• The screen stays on. The page keeps the phone awake during the service, where the phone allows it.
• Who is speaking. When a second voice speaks, each speaker’s sentences get their own colour and a label such as “Speaker 2”, so a pastor, a reader and an interpreter read apart. Not yet in rooms that include Cantonese. About speaker detection.
• Look back. Scroll up to read a sentence again; a button brings you back to now.
• Quiet moments stay quiet. During worship the page says “Worship · captions resume when someone speaks”; songs aren’t captioned. When the desk marks a private moment, captions pause on every phone and nothing is recorded.

For people who would rather not hold a phone, the same captions can go on the projector: whole sentences, in up to three languages, the language being spoken among them. The big screen comes with the paid plans. Captions on the big screen.

Turn on “Save transcripts” in a room’s settings, and each service’s words are kept for your team. On the service’s page they can read it, correct a line, leave a line out (a stray announcement, say) and download it in any of the room’s languages: as a text file (.txt) for a handout, or as subtitles (.srt) for the sermon video.

How long transcripts are kept: the last service only on Free, 90 days on Chapel and 12 months on Church and Campus. Then they are deleted. Service audio is never stored.

A speech recognition engine writes these words, not a person, and nobody checks them as they appear. Names and unusual words can come out wrong. The church glossary teaches it your pastors’ names and your church’s words, which helps the captions as well as the translation.

Voclyn’s captions aren’t CART, where a trained captioner writes the words live, and they don’t replace a sign language interpreter or a hearing loop. Ask the members who will use them what works for them; some will want one of those as well. We make no claim that Voclyn meets any accessibility law or standard.

Captions in the language being spoken work on every plan. Free offers your main language and one other language, and translates 6 hours a month; after that, services still run with captions in the original language until the 1st. Paid plans have unlimited translation hours (fair use) and add the big screen. No plan has a cap on listeners. See the plans.