Google Translate Introduces Nepali Text To Speech

Google translate has been continually growing since its inception. It started with two languages; English and Arabic and it now supports more than a hundred languages. It not only translates languages but also supports text to speech and speech to text conversions and as of January 2017, the Google translate app has Japanese to English functionality via Word Lens technology.

But the news for the people here in Nepal is that, Google translate now supports text to speech in Nepali language as well. Yes guys, we now have Nepali text to speech conversion via Google translate. A nonchalant, slow but determined voice goes, “timilai kasto lagdai cha” .

Text-to-speech (TTS) is a type of speech synthesis application that is used to create a spoken sound version of the text in a computer document, such as a help file or a Web page. TTS can enable the reading of computer display information for the visually challenged person, or may simply be used to augment the reading of a text message.

Google translate from English to Nepali or vice-versa, however, still needs work. It translates ‘Happy birthday to you my friend’ as ‘timi mero sathi garna janmadinko’. But it is still something to hear your laptop speak in translated Nepali.

Follow the link to give this a try: https://translate.google.com/

Choose Nepali as your input language and start typing. Your input will automatically be translated to Nepali via unicode. Then click on the little sound icon to hear it.

Developers cannot still make use of the text to speech API though as Google has not made it public as of yet.