Thanks to the translation efforts of BYU Speeches, those addresses are already available in English, Spanish and Japanese as well
Every week, thousands of students gather on campus to be uplifted and inspired by remarkable devotional speakers. With the help of translators within BYU Speeches, thousands more across the globe can now access the spiritual reinforcement these speeches provide.
Since 2023, more than 100 devotionals have been translated in Spanish and Japanese. But now, in BYU’s 150th anniversary year, the speeches are now available in French and Portuguese as well, with possibly more on the way.
“As we expand our translation efforts, we hope to share the unique light of BYU and bring messages of hope to people around the world,” said Alayna Een, an editor with BYU Speeches.
Since 1972, BYU has published its weekly devotionals for public access, going online in 1996 and extending the reach of BYU devotionals to anyone with an internet connection. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown significantly since 1972, and many members across the globe are looking for uplifting gospel content like BYU devotionals.
In an effort to translate speeches into more languages, BYU speeches formed a partnership with the BYU College of Humanities, which provides funding and special learning opportunities for students and language speakers. BYU Speeches now has a small team of students overseeing the translation of these talks.
"I help get that end product we're looking for, which is to be able to spread light to various countries with our speeches in different languages," said Sarah Davila, a linguistics major and speech translation manager. "We've all grown so much in the way that we view this work and the spirit has been so key to making sure that our work is enough for the people that need it."
Added student translator Peter Demars: "We're learning spiritually from what we're translating."
Machine translation produces an initial translation of each speech, the language students review and clean up the draft, and then the speech is sent off to native speakers for a final evaluation. The text is then uploaded to the website, made available for all visitors to read or listen to.
Nicholas Paz, an undergrad student who has been on the team for over a year and serves as the translation lead of his student team, said he loves being part of this work.
“The nicest experiences are when people leave comments like, ‘This is exactly the talk I need today’ or ‘I’ve always wanted this translated into my native language to share,’” Paz said.
Charles Cranney, who’s been at BYU for more than 45 years and started the BYU Speeches website back in 1996, says that each inspiring address is a gift of light to the person who reads or hears it.
"We’re thrilled that these BYU Speeches translations help fulfill BYU’s mission to 'greatly enlarge Brigham Young University’s influence in a world we wish to improve,'" Cranney said.
The speeches are now more accessible than ever before — content is regularly uploaded to the BYU Speeches podcast, website, Facebook page, and YouTube channel, which has over 238,000 subscribers. To explore BYU Speeches, go to https://speeches.byu.edu/# and if you want to explore the speeches available in different languages, try these links:
Spanish: https://speeches.byu.edu/spa/
French: https://speeches.byu.edu/fra/
Portuguese: https://speeches.byu.edu/por/
Japanese: https://speeches.byu.edu/jpn/
