You are receiving this email because you have recently or in the past signed up to help translate videos through I’ll Be Honest.

First, I must apologize for the delayed response to some of you who submitted a sign-up form months ago or even a few days back. This email is long overdue. In short, my time has been limited due to my responsibilities as a father of six and a pastor, leaving less time than I would like for online ministries.

Despite these challenges, is there still a massive opportunity to translate resources into other languages and distribute them online? Absolutely! The door remains wide open, and technology continues to make it easier to disseminate truth. For instance, in the past, individuals like a dear sister, Carrie, and a brother, Michael, among others, transcribed over 400 of our videos into English and timed the subtitles. However, with the recent AI boom, we can now obtain almost 100% accurate subtitles automatically, eliminating the wait for an English transcript and enabling the translation of any video.

With these advancements, we must explore how AI can aid in spreading the Gospel. One possibility extends beyond embedding subtitles into videos to creating an audio version of the video. For example, we transformed a translated script for a video on our Spanish channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY-HLoKCST8) into an audio dub using AI speech synthesis tools. This means the voice reading the script is synthesized, not the original speaker’s. This approach is particularly beneficial for longer sermons, where reading subtitles for an hour can be demanding. While AI-generated audio sounds good in Spanish and French, other languages may still need improvement.

Where do we stand? I continue to support and encourage translation work and want to lead the charge forward. However, I’d like to introduce audio dubbing into our toolkit, especially for longer messages where listening to an hour-long sermon can be challenging with subtitles.

I encourage you to try a demo at https://elevenlabs.io/speech-synthesis. If you find a voice that sounds good in your language, please let me know. We could then opt for audio renderings instead of subtitles.

As always, our spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pUeXU2UT5SB1cPbsOWA8l7a0DGPxNb7AbmwBFDOG4xU/edit) lists hundreds of videos with ready-to-translate subtitle files.

Please reach out if you have any questions,