Two languages, both kept

Your words in their language. Theirs in English.

One tap sends what you type in the mission's language, so the people around them can read it too. One tap renders their reply into English. Both are kept, side by side.

Translation

Somewhere in the first months, they start thinking in French, or Spanish, or Tagalog, and the texts home begin to carry it. Without a place that keeps both what they wrote and what it meant, a family loses the meaning now or loses their actual words later.

Begin their archive See how it works
  • Your original is stored on the same message as what was sent, so nothing is lost in either direction.
  • A translation hiccup never holds a message — it goes out in your own words, exactly as typed.
  • The translator is instructed to keep names, greetings and scripture references as written, and never to add, soften, or invent content.
  • If they edit a message, its old translation is cleared instead of left standing.
  • Included with the plan — no add-on charge, no separate translation account.

How it works

1

Tell it who reads what

At setup you pick the mission's language from the list. Your own language is English unless you set another on your family page — that is the language you write in, and the one chat translates out of. When it differs from the mission's, chat offers to translate.

2

Write in English. It arrives in theirs.

Tap Send in Spanish — or French, or whatever the mission speaks — above the message box. It stays on for that thread. You type in English; the message reaches their Google Chat in the mission's language. Your original is kept too.

3

Tap to read theirs

Under any message they send, tap Translate. Their words stay exactly as written; the English appears beneath them in italic. Each message is translated once and remembered — unless they edit it, when the old translation is cleared.

On the printed page

What ends up in the book

  • Keep a run of texts as one story — the week of the fever, the baptism that nearly fell through — and the book reads your side in the words you actually wrote, not the mission-language version that went over the wire.
  • Their side of a kept story reads in English wherever you tapped Translate on something they wrote in the mission's language; where you never tapped Translate, their words go in exactly as they sent them.
  • Every line is attributed by name and grouped under the day it was said, so a four-day exchange reads as a conversation, not a wall of undated text.
  • A single message kept on its own goes in exactly as sent, in whichever language it was sent — nothing smoothed over.
  • Kept chat prints inside the chapter for the area they were serving in, dated to the day it was said and headed with the name you gave the story, among the letters from those weeks.

Questions

Does my missionary have to do anything?
No. They keep answering from Google Chat as they already do. When you send in the mission's language, that is simply what arrives on their side. Translating their messages happens in your archive; nothing is sent back to them.
Which languages?
The mission's language is picked at setup from a list of more than sixty spoken across missions. Each family member sets My language on their own page — common ones are suggested, and any can be typed. What you write goes out in the mission's language; what they send is rendered into English.
Does it cost extra?
No. It runs inside your plan on the same metered AI the archive already uses — no add-on fee, no separate account. Use is capped per family each month; if a family reaches the cap, the thread says translation is paused for the month, and anything you send still goes out in your own words.
Will the book be printed in both languages?
No. Nothing in the book is set twice, once in each language — there is no bilingual edition. When you keep a run of texts as a story, your side goes in as the words you actually wrote, and their side in English wherever you tapped Translate on something written in the mission's language. A single message kept on its own goes in as it was sent. Their actual words stay on the message either way.

Your words in their language. Theirs in English.

Begin their archive

Everything else it keeps