Hi, I am the solo dev behind Beletria, an app for reading classic texts from the public domain and learning their language along the way. It starts with German and French, and more languages will follow.
What it does
You pick a book and the app shows it to you one sentence at a time, in the original. Tap a word and you get what it means in that sentence, not the first dictionary entry. Flip the translation to check yourself, ask for a short note on the grammar the sentence is using, or press play to hear it read by a professional voice. Save the words you want to keep and train them later with flip cards. Everything is prepared and checked before a book reaches the shelf, so reading feels like reading, not like waiting for a model.
Why books
The best way to understand another culture is to learn its language. And who can teach a language better than its famous authors, people who bent words to their will every day and wrote world-renowned novels and essays? The mainstream alternative is to drill through dry language-learning textbooks or lose hours to engagement-maxxed language-learning apps. You might think that is the only way, until one day you open an actual book and find out that it can be captivating, inspiring, fun, and can broaden your perspective on life at the same time. Suddenly, learning a language becomes a passion, and curiosity gets you further than willpower alone ever could.
There is a second reason. We live in a world cluttered with nonsensical AI-generated garbage, and old books from the public domain remain one of the last sanctuaries of original, human-made, high-quality writing, pieces of history and art at the same time. To be clear about where Beletria stands: the translations and notes are machine-prepared, then checked, once, before a book goes on the shelf. But the text you read is the author's, word for word. So I encourage you to dive into the stories they tell and heal yourself from the AI brain rot and the infinite doomscrolling.
Humble beginnings
Every project needs to start somewhere. Processing a single book turns out to be quite expensive: each sentence needs to be translated and explained in detail, and each of its words needs to be translated in the context of that sentence. On top of that, the app uses many professional voices from ElevenLabs for text-to-speech, which drives the cost up further. I have a limited budget, so I will add new books at the pace it allows. Still, feel free to submit your wishlist through the app, and of course your feedback is highly appreciated.
I would like to start small, bring together a community of avid readers, listen to your feedback, and eventually build something that everyone can enjoy and benefit from.
Will it stay free?
I will keep the app free as long as the costs are manageable for me. At some point, some premium content might be needed to cover them. But the first users will earn early adopter status, and for them the app stays free forever.
What this blog is for
Here I intend to share new additions and their background, small snippets about the authors and their lives, and sometimes even a technical behind-the-scenes story. So stay tuned. Nothing in this blog is AI generated, which also means it is less polished, but at least a bit more authentic. If you would rather not check back, there is an RSS feed.
The Beletria app is at app.beletria.com. It is free, has no ads, and is made in Zürich, Switzerland.