Over the last two decades, translation crowdsourcing has developed significantly. It is particularly known for its innovative approach, combining the concept of crowdsourcing and that of natural and non-professional translation. Applying ethnographical participant observation, this study considers the participants' experience from three different perspectives: the one of the trained translators; the untrained translators; and the translation project manager. It contributes to the corpus of sociology of translation, providing insight into the experiences of a translation project carried out in the Christian subculture of ‘free churches', characterised by rich volunteer translation activity. The leveraged data serves as a basis for decision-making by actors interested in applying translation crowdsourcing. The study shows some particularities in volunteer translation project management and how one might bridge the gap between trained and untrained translators through collaboration and mutual training. In the perspective of a socio-constructivist teaching approach, it confirms that translation crowdsourcing projects represent a significant learning environment.