Dari is the Persian of Afghanistan. On a page it looks almost identical to the Persian of Iran, and a reader of one follows the other without much effort. Out loud the distance is wider, and in a congregation it is wider still, because the two communities usually arrived here for different reasons and do not want to be treated as one.
Worth getting straight before you ask a guest anything, because the wrong word in the question makes the answer harder to give.
The official name in Afghanistan for the Persian spoken there. Some Afghans call it Farsi themselves, some are firm that it is Dari. Use whichever word the person in front of you used, and do not correct them.
The variety spoken by many Hazara families, with its own vocabulary and pronunciation. Hazaragi speakers read standard Dari, so the captions work. It is still worth knowing the word, because being recognised matters.
The Iranian standard, which we hold as a separate language. Written, the two are close enough that a Dari reader follows Persian comfortably. Spoken, an Iranian voice sounds noticeably foreign to an Afghan ear. See the Persian page.
The same Danish sentence, translated into both, in the same run. Unedited. This is the clearest way to show that they are handled as two languages rather than one with a label.
Your speaker says, in Danish: Lad os ikke gå over åen efter vand. Svaret står lige her i teksten.
بیایید برای آب آنطرف رودخانه نرویم.
Dari kept the picture: do not go across the river for water. The image survives because it carries.
بیایید بیخودی دنبال راهحل دور نگردیم وقتی همین نزدیکی است.
Persian dropped the river and went straight to the meaning: do not go looking far off for something that is right here. Same source sentence, same moment, two different judgements.
And a word that goes wrong everywhere: Og Ånden faldt over dem alle sammen, og de begyndte at tale på andre sprog.
The Danish word covers all three and the right answer depends entirely on knowing you are in Acts chapter two. A substitution engine picks the most common sense in general text and sends it everywhere at once.
روح بر همهٔ ایشان نازل شد و آنها شروع کردند به سخن گفتن به زبانهای دیگر.
The Spirit came down on all of them and they began to speak in other languages. It knew where it was in the text, so it knew which of the three senses was meant.
Produced with no preparation and no glossary. Share your outline with Context Enhancer and the service starts with your passage and your names already known.
One of these three is a yes. We would rather you read that here than discover it on a Sunday morning.
Yes. Right to left, correctly aligned, on a guest's phone or on the big screen. This is the full experience: whole sentences, in Dari, keeping pace with the talk.
Not yet. There is no Dari voice. A guest who cannot read comfortably does not have a Dari option today, and pretending otherwise would only waste their morning.
Not yet. If your preacher speaks Dari, the room cannot pick that up as the source language. A Dari speaker preaching would need to lead in another language for now.
Pashto next door has all three. Dari has one. That is an uncomfortable comparison and it is the true one.
If your Dari-speaking guests read well, this works today and works properly. If they do not, captions are not a solution for them, and no amount of describing the feature differently will change that.
There is one honest workaround, and it is a real one. Because written and spoken Persian are close to Dari, a good number of Dari speakers follow the Persian voice without difficulty. It will sound Iranian rather than Afghan, and some people mind that and some do not. Ask the person, offer it, and let them decide after a minute of listening rather than in the abstract.
No dates, because a date we miss is worse than no date at all.
The gap that costs the most, so it is the one worth closing first. A voice makes Dari usable for guests who cannot read comfortably, which today is the group least served by anything we offer.
So an Afghan preacher can lead in their own language and the whole room follows. Today that only works the other way round, which puts the burden on the person who should be leading.
Smaller, and genuinely useful. Nobody should have to read an English menu to reach their own language, and Pashto guests already do not have to.
If your congregation is waiting on one of these, say so. Knowing that a real fellowship needs it, and roughly how many people that is, changes the order things get built in.
Dari and Persian are two standard forms of the same language. Pashto is a relative, not a twin, and the difference is not a matter of degree.
All three are Iranian languages, which is a family, not a country. Within it, Dari and Persian sit close enough that speakers read each other's writing. Pashto sits far enough away that a Persian speaker gets very little from a Pashto sentence, and the reverse is equally true.
Structurally, Dari puts the verb at the end of the sentence, which is the single fact that matters most for live translation. A tool emitting words as they arrive cannot know what is being claimed until the speaker stops. Working from the meaning of the finished thought is not a refinement here, it is the only approach that produces a sentence rather than a heap of parts.
There is no grammatical gender to get wrong, which helps, and a system of linking words between nouns that a word by word tool routinely drops, which does not.
The pastoral part, and it is not optional.
Many Afghan Christians in Europe came to faith after leaving, and for a good number of them being publicly identified with a church carries consequences for relatives who did not leave. This is not a hypothetical risk to be balanced against a nice photograph for the newsletter.
And ask each adult separately which language they want. A husband answering for a wife, or a teenager answering for a parent, is how a family ends up with one person quietly not following for a year.
For reading, many Dari speakers follow Persian comfortably, and today that is the only way to give them a voice. It will sound Iranian to them. Ask the person rather than deciding for them, and offer both so they can compare for a minute.
No, and they are not close. They are two separate official languages of one country, from different branches of the same wider family. The Pashto page sets out the difference and what Pashto can do that Dari cannot yet.
Yes. Hazaragi speakers read standard Dari, which is what the captions are in. The spoken variety differs; the written one they are reading does not.
Yes, in the same service, at no extra cost, along with anything else your room needs. Since a family can split between the two, running both is usually the right answer rather than a luxury.
Every one of these can run at once, in one service, for one price.
Or open the full list of 183 and check what each one can actually do before you promise anybody anything.
Nothing to install, no card, and nothing for your guest to sign up to.