DaoGrove Labs launches 古脈今聲, bringing AI-assisted reading to classical Chinese family documents
A new iOS app photographs, punctuates, and translates genealogies, old letters, and historical texts into modern vernacular Chinese.
DaoGrove Labs today announced that 古脈今聲 (Gumai Jinsheng) is now available on the Apple App Store. The Chinese-language app uses AI to make classical Chinese texts — the kind of documents many families own but few can actually read — legible in modern vernacular Chinese (白話文).
古脈今聲 is built for a specific, often-overlooked problem: text that is too rare, too personal, or too obscure to have an existing modern translation. Genealogies (族譜), old family letters (家書), county gazetteers (縣誌), and historical contracts (老契約) rarely have a published vernacular edition, unlike well-known classics. Reading them has generally required either fluency in classical Chinese or a specialist willing to transcribe and translate them by hand.
How it works
Users can photograph a page of classical text, paste text directly, upload EPUB, TXT, or TEI/XML files, or import canonical works — such as the Analects (論語), Mencius (孟子), and Zuo Zhuan (左傳) — from a built-in library. The app's AI recognizes the text, adds punctuation, segments it into sentences, and renders it into modern Chinese, with the original and translation displayed side by side for comparison. A personal library lets users organize multiple texts and chapters, track translation progress, and sync across devices.
Pricing
古脈今聲 offers a free tier for trying the app, a Standard plan sized for mid-length classical works such as the Analects, and a Research plan with a larger quota for longer historical sources such as Zuo Zhuan. Pricing is shown in local currency on the App Store and varies by region.
Availability
古脈今聲 is available now for iPhone on the Apple App Store, requiring iOS 15.1 or later.
About DaoGrove Labs
DaoGrove Labs is an independent software studio founded by Wan Yeung, combining cultural research, language technology, and product design to build tools for interpretation and learning. Its other work includes Oracle Union (問緣堂), a family of self-discovery apps launching with Oracle Profile.
Media contact
DaoGrove Labs
support@daogrovelabs.com