---
title: Clerina - Everyday Romansh Phrases
emoji: 🏔️
colorFrom: red
colorTo: blue
sdk: gradio
sdk_version: 6.30.0
app_file: app.py
pinned: false
license: cc-by-nc-4.0
short_description: Everyday Romansh phrases for your Graubünden idiom
models:
  - ZurichNLP/romansh-nllb-1.3b-ct2
---

# Clerina – everyday Romansh phrases

**Live: https://clerina.ch** · Hugging Face Space: `sleiron/allegra-romansh-phrases`

Prototype by Sandro Barbieri, University of Zurich, CAS Generative AI, Class Fall 2026.

Clerina helps visitors to Graubünden greet locals in *their* Romansh. It finds where you are (device location, or a
town / postcode you type), works out the Romansh idiom spoken there and shows 11 everyday phrases plus counting
1–10 in that idiom, with pronunciation audio and a map of the idiom areas.

Romansh has **five regional idioms** – Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Puter, Vallader – and **Rumantsch Grischun**,
the common written standard. Outside the Romansh area Clerina shows Rumantsch Grischun.

## Features

- **Where am I?** Device location or a typed place name / postcode (swisstopo search); the step 2 heading then says
  e.g. "You are in Scuol – the local idiom is Vallader" with the idiom in its map colour.
- **Idiom map** on the swisstopo national map with the municipalities of each idiom.
- **Phrase table** for the current idiom, or all five idioms side by side (local idiom first, then by distance,
  Rumantsch Grischun last), with the meaning in the interface language.
- **Pronunciation audio** (computer voice for now, each clip checked by a Romansh speech recogniser).
- **Five interface languages** (EN, DE, FR, IT, RM): follows the browser language, remembers the choice.
- **Light view by default**, dark view on request; mobile layout.
- **About page** with sources, credits, a plain-language "how it was built" and an architecture diagram.
- **Readable for search engines and AI assistants**: plain HTML phrase pages in English, German, French and Italian
  (`/en/`, `/de/vallader`, `/fr/bonjour`, …), sitemap, robots.txt (AI crawlers welcome), `llms.txt`, structured data.

## Documentation

| Document | Contents |
|---|---|
| [docs/architecture.md](docs/architecture.md) | Code structure, request flow, location → idiom logic, serving, front-end details |
| [docs/content.md](docs/content.md) | Where the Romansh comes from, verification rules, audio, how to change content |
| [docs/operations.md](docs/operations.md) | Local setup, deploy, domain (AWS), monitoring, traffic and costs, troubleshooting |
| [docs/decisions.md](docs/decisions.md) | Decision log, design rules and open points |

## Quick start

```
python -m venv %USERPROFILE%\.venvs\bundi
%USERPROFILE%\.venvs\bundi\Scripts\pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
%USERPROFILE%\.venvs\bundi\Scripts\python app.py        # http://127.0.0.1:7860
```

Deploy: `git commit`, then `python tools\deploy.py` (see [docs/operations.md](docs/operations.md)).

## Project structure

| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
| `app.py` | UI layout, event wiring, HTML builders for results/tables; starts the server |
| `romansh.py` | Village list, location → idiom, swisstopo place search, idiom ordering, phrase table access, optional translation model |
| `i18n.py` | All interface texts in EN/DE/FR/IT/RM, region descriptions, tips, phrase meanings |
| `brand.py` | Design tokens (light/dark), Gradio theme, CSS, header panorama, hero/step/footer HTML, theme JS |
| `map_view.py` | Leaflet map (swisstopo tiles + idiom areas) rendered in an iframe |
| `about.py` | About page: sources, how it was built, diagram, technologies, imprint |
| `preview_tags.py` | ASGI wrapper for the app pages: link-preview tags, title/description/canonical, crawler fallback text |
| `seo.py` | Content pages per language / idiom / phrase, sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt, Markdown table, manifest |
| `phrases.json` | The phrase table (built by `tools/build_phrases.py` and `tools/build_numbers.py`) |
| `regions.geojson` | Municipality outlines per idiom (built by `tools/build_regions.py`) |
| `audio/` | Pronunciation clips `audio/<idiom>/<key>.mp3` and `audio/manifest.json` |
| `static/preview.png` | Link-preview image (built by `tools/make_preview.py`), served at `/preview.png` |
| `static/icons/` | Favicon and app icons (built by `tools/make_icons.py`) |
| `tools/` | Build scripts (phrases, numbers, regions, audio, preview image, icons) and the deploy script |

## Licence and notes

The ZurichNLP model and the OmniVoice voice are CC BY-NC 4.0, so Clerina is **non-commercial**. Base map, boundaries
and place search © swisstopo. The visual style is inspired by Swiss tourism design; no official logos, names or
photos are used. Independent project, not affiliated with Switzerland Tourism or Lia Rumantscha.