When something goes wrong, and the service starts in four minutes

This page is written for the person standing at the desk right now. Find your symptom, do the first thing listed, and move on. The explanations come afterwards.

The single most useful habit: open the dashboard and run a ten-second test before the service, every week. Almost everything below is something you would rather find at 10:20 than at 10:31.

Nothing is being picked up from the microphone

Do this first: look at the bottom right of the Sermon Translation section. It shows the microphone currently in use. If it says the wrong device, that is your problem.

1. Go to Settings → Speech-to-text settings → Audio input and click Edit.

2. Choose the correct input and click Save. It is remembered for future Sundays.

3. Come back to the Translation page and start recording again.

If the browser never asked for microphone permission, it cannot hear anything at all. Look for a small camera or microphone icon in the address bar, click it, and allow the microphone for this site. Then reload the page.

If the right input is selected and you still get nothing, the audio is not reaching the computer. Check the physical cable from the desk, and check that the channel you are sending is actually carrying the preacher's microphone rather than a muted or empty mix.

Chrome or Edge give the most reliable results. If you are on a different browser and nothing else has worked, try one of those before anything more drastic.

Words appear on the dashboard, but nothing reaches the phones

Work down this list in order.

1. Is the recording actually running? The microphone button turns red while it is live, and a timer runs beside it. If it is not red, nothing is being sent.

2. Are you in Manual mode? If Manual speech-to-text mode is switched on in Settings, transcribed text waits for you to send it. Click Send or press Shift + Enter for each thought — or switch manual mode off to have sentences sent automatically during pauses.

3. Is the visitor approved? If they joined by searching for your church by name and Automatically approve users is off, they are waiting for you. Look at the notification area on the Translation page and accept them.

4. Is their language switched on? If they chose a language that is not active, it shows in the same notification area as a language request. Approve it and their text starts within seconds.

5. Is your free allowance used up? See Translation has stopped completely below.

A visitor's code is not working

The sign-in code is six characters, shown in two groups of three — for example ABC-123. Find it under Settings → Translation settings → Sign in code.

• Capital letters do not matter. Neither does the dash.

• Check for 0 against O, and 1 against I. This is the usual cause.

• Read it out rather than pointing at it. Most failed codes are misread, not wrong.

Faster than any of this: click Download QR Code on the same settings screen and show it on a phone or print it. Scanning never involves typing, and codes and QR codes both skip the approval step entirely.

A visitor is stuck on "pending approval"

They joined by searching for your church by name, and your church approves people by hand.

• Accept them from the notification area on the Translation page.

• To stop this happening at all, switch on Automatically approve users in Settings → Translation settings.

• Right now, in a hurry: give them the QR code or the sign-in code. Neither ever needs approval.

Translation has stopped completely

Check the counter at the top of the dashboard.

If it says you have used all your free characters, your church's free allowance is finished — it is one shared pool, not one per language. Click Add a payment method to keep translating, add a card or IBAN, and translation resumes immediately. You are only charged for what you use beyond the free allowance.

If you see Your last payment failed, click Pay invoice, settle it and update the card. Access continues while it is unpaid, but the subscription is cancelled if it stays that way.

Worth doing in the week, not on Sunday: if your counter is getting low, add a payment method before the weekend. Adding one costs nothing while you are still inside the free allowance.

The church Wi-Fi keeps dropping

Stability matters far more than speed here.

• Use a cable if you possibly can. A wired connection to the dictation computer removes the most common cause of dropouts.

• Keep the dictation computer off the guest network. Give visitors the guest Wi-Fi and put the desk on something quieter.

• Mobile data is a perfectly good backup. A 4G or 5G hotspot with three bars or more will run a service.

If the connection drops mid-service, stop the recording, wait for the network, and start it again. Anything spoken while you were offline is not recovered, so restart as soon as you notice.

The MIDI pedal or button is not responding

1. Go to Settings → Speech-to-text settings → MIDI controls.

2. Check the device shows (connected). If it shows (not connected), the device is unplugged or the browser has lost it — reconnect it and reload the page.

3. If it shows Not set up, click Edit, click Connect, and allow MIDI access when the browser asks. You only do this once per computer.

MIDI is not available in every browser. If the section is missing from Settings altogether, use Chrome or Edge.

Swiss German is being cut into odd pieces

Swiss German ends sentences by pause rather than by the AI's judgement, and you can tune it.

Go to Settings → Speech-to-text settings and find Send sentences after a set time of silence. The value is in milliseconds. Increase it if sentences are being cut off mid-thought, decrease it if they are arriving too slowly.

Change it in the week, test it, and leave it alone on Sunday.

A name or a term keeps coming out wrong

That is what the Keyword Booster is for. It is a mid-week job, not a Sunday one.

If a word matters a great deal and you have no time to prepare, switch to Type mode for that section and type it yourself, or use Prepared Text.

Nothing here matches

Click the chat icon in the bottom corner of the dashboard. It reaches the people who build Church Translation.

Tell us what you see on screen and what you expected. If you can, say which church you are and roughly what time it happened — that lets us look at the right service straight away.