As an example he offered his own church, where three congregations — one English-speaking, one Spanish-speaking and one Armenian — share a building but seem content to worship in their own languages.
Tahaafe-Williams and Callaway also have deeper concerns about the social and ethical effects of translating worship with AI. Tahaafe-Williams, an Indigenous person who speaks the Polynesian language Tongan, said it is important in her community that the next generation is fluent in their tongue and that they have input in any uses of their language. AI translation “will be great if it works, but I also don’t want it to be a tool that de-skills migrants and Indigenous peoples,” she said.
Callaway and Tahaafe-Williams agreed that accuracy of translation should be a key concern for congregations considering using live AI translation. “When it comes to preaching as a form, what you’re saying and how you’re saying it should matter a lot,” said Callaway. “Christian theology historically is basically a whole bunch of Christians arguing about words,” which can fundamentally change a group’s understanding of who Jesus was, the theologian said.
Without knowing it, Timberline Windsor implemented Callaway and Tahaafe-Williams’ advice for ensuring accuracy, asking bilingual church members test the quality of Wordly’s translations.
Callaway also pointed to the ethical questions that many technologies raise, from how cellphones are made to the outsized energy usage of AI. He particularly highlighted that many AI translators go out and scrape up “ the real human translators out there, their work, and then (don’t compensate) them for that work.” Religious leaders have to ask, he said, “ is the usefulness in your ministry, does it justify the ethical questions that are raised?”
Mehl, the Timberline pastor, said Wordly’s customizable glossary gives Timberline’s Windsor campus some control over the translations of specific terms, and Wordly’s Deasy said that the quality of the translations “continues to get better and better over time” as his company’s team fine-tunes its product.
Mehl also said the service has the virtue of being inexpensive. Though a spokesperson for Wordly told RNS that the cost varies according to the number of users and the number of hours of translation used, a small church can expect to spend less than $5,000 a year.
Other smaller companies advertise lower prices. OneAccord said its pricing starts at $150 a month for five hours, and Polyglossia chargesg $105 per month for 10 hours of translation of one language, along with a start-up cost.
The bottom line for Callaway, however, is not whether Christians can make AI work for them, but whether AI can be more Christian. He hopes that Christians will build relationships with AI engineers to steer the future of the technology, instead of just reacting to what the engineers create on their own.
Christians, he said, should “ think through what are the redemptive, the constructive, the life-giving ways we can leverage this technology as opposed to just simply saying technologists built something and then we figure out how we can use it.”
This article originally appeared here.
