When the big earthquake in Nepal happened in 2015, I was working with a volunteer organization called Translators Without Borders to help with translation during relief efforts. Since I was in the USA I could not contribute back physically, so this was the next best thing.

My goal was to help volunteers that were in the field in Nepal communicate in English -> Nepali and back. Even though this was somewhat effective, there was still a communication gap because most people in Nepal in remote parts could not even read in Nepali.

I looked around for solutions but couldn't find any Nepali Text To Speech solutions. The builder brain in me fired up and I decided to build a Nepali Text To Speech engine using some of the groundwork that was laid by Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (Big Library in Nepal) which they had abandoned halfway.

I spend all night hacking along to build a web app that let the volunteers paste translated text and have it spoken. The result was https://nepalispeech.com/ and the first iteration of this was built in just 13 ish hours.

I hope the people that got affected by the earthquake are in a better situation now.