Free iPhone App for Translation in wards

[markcast]

Hi all,

My ward has a need for translation in Sacrament meeting so I made a free iPhone app called ChurchLingual that uses an iPhone's on-device AI capabilities to translate talks from the pulpit and spins up a QR code that anyone can use to view the transcript/captions in their language.

The free Apple App store version is free forever on iPhone - no ads, no expiration, and its features will not move behind a paywall later. It runs on-device for two languages (captions only), so it costs me nothing to serve doing captions only and a couple of languages.

- It knows LDS vocabulary (just select LDS in settings). "Ward" doesn't transcribe as "award," and sacrament meeting / Relief Society / Elders
Quorum come out as reunión sacramental / Sociedad de Socorro / cuórum de élderes rather than literal translations.

You can also add other names and local terms in the app to improve the translation.

- Audio: leaving the iPhone mic near the pulpit can work, but a line-in feed from the chapel sound system (USB-C audio interface) to your iPhone (like an iRig stream) is better. Setup diagrams are on the site churchlingual.com, but I would test a bit before going live with this as your chapel's acoustics may vary.

-Requirements: The newer the iPhone the better, since it's using the iPhone's own on-device Apple Intelligence to do the translating in the free version (iPhone 15 Pro or newer). You will also need someone to manually switch from English to Spanish if a Spanish speaker speaks.

There is a paid Voice and multi-language option but that is not necessary to use for the basic two language on-device version which is the default, and as the cost of live voice AI comes down hopefully it becomes cheaper to offer.

Open to any feedback or ideas too on how to improve this.

Thanks,
-Mark