Most writing systems were adapted from a neighbour's and drifted into shape over centuries. Armenian was not. Tradition credits it to Mesrop Mashtots, who built it to fit the sounds of Armenian, for one stated purpose: putting Scripture into the language people actually spoke. The translation that followed is still admired enough that the translators themselves are commemorated. The alphabet is still the alphabet, and you are looking at it in the heading above.
Not many languages can point at their own alphabet and say what it was for. This one can, and it matters for how the words on your screen will land.
The letters were designed for the sounds of Armenian rather than borrowed from a language with different ones, which is why the alphabet has needed almost no repair since. A couple of letters were added along the way. That is close to the whole story.
The Armenian Bible has long been called the queen of translations, and the translators who produced it are remembered by name and marked with their own day. Very few cultures give translators a feast.
Armenians count themselves among the earliest peoples to take on Christianity as a nation, and the literary tradition that followed has not been interrupted. A congregation carries that whether or not anybody mentions it.
It has its own punctuation, and you can see it in our output further down the page. Most of these are the details that quietly go wrong when a screen was designed around English.
Six Danish lines were run into every language at once, the way a live room runs, and nothing has been edited since. Here are three of the Armenian ones.
Թլփատությունը չէ այն արտաքինն մարմնի վրա, այլ սրտի թլփատությունն է Սուրբ Հոգով։
From the Danish Omskærelsen er ikke den ydre på kroppen, men hjertets omskærelse ved Ånden.
The word for circumcision here is the one that belongs to Scripture, not a clinical description of a procedure. And Ånden, which on its own could be a mood or a bottle of spirits, arrived as the Holy Spirit by name.
Քանի որ դուք փրկված եք շնորհով հավատքի միջոցով, և դա ձեր կողմից չէ, դա Աստծու պարգևն է։
From the Danish Af nåde er I frelst ved tro, og det skyldes ikke jer selv, det er Guds gave.
Grace and saved both land on the church words rather than on the everyday ones. Generic engines tend to give mercy and rescued here, which are not what a congregation means by them, and the verse stops being the verse.
Բայց անհանգստանալու պատճառ չկա։ From the Danish: Men der er ingen ko på isen. Vi når det, vi skal. Literally, there is no cow on the ice, which means there is nothing to worry about. The Armenian has no cow in it. Look at the very end of the line: that is the Armenian sentence mark, not a colon and not a full stop.
A word for word engine would have put a cow on some ice, reached for the everyday words for mercy and rescue, and finished each sentence with a full stop that Armenian does not use.
Armenian has two written standards. They are close relatives, not accents of each other, and a speaker of one notices the other straight away.
The standard of Armenia itself, and the one most familiar to families who came by way of Armenia, Iran or the former Soviet Union. The output on this page is Eastern Armenian.
Spoken in much of the older diaspora, by communities whose families left Anatolia generations ago and settled around the Mediterranean and further west. It differs in pronunciation and in points of grammar, and it is the more fragile of the two.
So ask before Sunday. If your congregation is Western Armenian speaking, what they will receive is readable but is not their standard, and that is worth knowing in advance rather than in the moment. Tell us if this is your situation. It is exactly the kind of thing that moves up the list when a real church asks for it.
In the Armenian Apostolic tradition, worship is in Classical Armenian, the old language of the Bible translation. It is deeply loved and it is not what anybody uses at home.
That is not a problem to be fixed, and it is certainly not what live translation is for. But it does mean that a preacher speaking to a congregation, or a visitor giving a talk, is doing it in the modern language. What MulingStream produces is modern Armenian, the language of the conversation afterwards over coffee, which is the part somebody who does not speak it is most likely to be shut out of.
If your congregation uses particular wording for names, feasts or terms, put it into Keywords and it will be used exactly, every service, in every language the room is running.
Three separate questions, and Armenian answers yes to all three.
Armenian communities in Europe are not one arrival. Some families have been here for generations. Others came much more recently, from Armenia itself after the Soviet Union came apart, and from Middle Eastern countries during the conflicts there.
It is common to find a grandmother most at home in Western Armenian, parents who speak Eastern, and children who are more fluent in the language of the country they were born in. One family, three different needs on a Sunday.
Many Armenian families arrived by way of somewhere else, and carry Russian, Arabic, Persian or Turkish alongside Armenian. Do not assume Armenian is the easiest option for a particular person. Ask which they would rather have.
A pass carries as many languages as your guests need, and the number of people listening does not change the price. There is no reason to make a family pick one on your behalf.
Eastern, which is the standard of Armenia and the one most recent arrivals in Europe read. If your congregation is Western Armenian speaking, the captions will be readable but will not be their standard. Tell us, because a real church asking is what moves this.
They appear. Armenian is carried properly rather than left to whatever font a device happens to fall back on, on the phone and on the big screen alike.
That is not what this is for, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. What MulingStream produces is modern Armenian, for the sermon, the talk and the conversation afterwards.
Yes. Armenian can be the language spoken from the stage as well as one of the languages being listened to, so a visiting Armenian speaker preaches and everyone else reads or hears their own language at the same moment.
Or read how the translation itself works, in Smart Translation.
After that a church can pay per gathering: a Service Pass for one gathering, a Day Pass for the whole day, a Week Pass for seven days, and a pass never expires.