Pentecost service in 25 languages

This year’s Pentecost service of the New Apostolic Church will be celebrated by Chief Apostle Jean-Luc Schneider in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. Already on the Saturday before the service, all African Apostles as well as all District Apostles and District Apostle Helpers will meet for a conference with the Chief Apostle. A Pentecost concert will be given in their honour in our Lusaka Central Congregation on the same day.

Interpreters in two locations

The Pentecost service on Sunday will take place in the National Heroes Stadium in Lusaka. The stadium seats 70,000 people. Chief Apostle Schneider will conduct the service in English; his sermon will be interpreted into Nyanja at the altar. Next to Bemba, Nyanja is one of the major languages in Zambia, a country that counts more than 70 languages and dialects. But Nyanja is also spoken in neighbouring Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

Additional interpreters will be available on location to simultaneously translate the sermon into German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Kiswahili. Kiswahili is the lingua franca in large parts of East Africa. It is estimated to be used by about 80 million people. These language interpretations will be available to people attending the service in the stadium and will also be transmitted to the broadcasting centre in Germany.

In Frankfurt in Germany, the divine service will be interpreted into an additional 18 languages. The congregations will receive a mixed video signal that includes the interpretation as well as the original sound.

A world united

A broadcast provider from Johannesburg has been engaged to film and record the events and transmit everything—including the interpretations—via satellite to Germany to the premises of Bischoff Publishers in Frankfurt. There the received signal, including the interpretations, will be processed and an additional 18 languages added. The video signal that will be transmitted from Frankfurt to more than 100 countries worldwide will carry a total of 25 languages.

For this purpose, two uplinks—a mobile communication link with satellite antennas—will be stationed at Bischoff Publishers. One will send the video signal, original soundtrack, and interpretations to a satellite, which will distribute the signal over Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia. The second unit will beam the signal—the original signal including the French, Kiswahili, Portuguese, and Spanish interpretations—via satellite to earth stations in Fuchsstadt and Jerusalem.

From there the signal will be transmitted via satellite and fibre-optic cable to earth stations on the other continents. From there the signal will be distributed to the various congregations via satellite and radio. Owing to the time difference, the transmission will be recorded in America and broadcast to the congregations later.

Internet streaming

Members in South-East Asia and in some countries in Africa, as well as others who are not able to reach a congregation in which the service is being broadcast, can follow the service on the Internet. The streaming will be processed by Bischoff Publishers via a provider in Dresden. Thirteen streams in different languages, quality, and bandwidths are available.

The video signal will cover a distance of some 144,000 km from its site of origin in Lusaka to the various receiving stations—and all in mere seconds.