14. Summary

This architecture provides a scalable, multilingual, phonetic-aware search system fully integrated with the existing WHG infrastructure. It leverages:

  • Epitran + PanPhon for linguistically grounded IPA generation.

  • Pitt CRC for heavy compute (model training, bulk processing).

  • DigitalOcean for responsive, real-time search.

  • Versioned embeddings for safe, iterative improvement.

  • Multiple fallback paths for robustness.

The design prioritises operational stability, data integrity, and incremental deployment while enabling cutting-edge phonetic search capabilities for historical place research.

15. References