Our inspiration came from one of our members who could speak, but not read Chinese. He was trying to learn, but reading a Chinese website was always a pain. Having text to speech in another tab was simply too cumbersome when every few words were new, nor would it be beneficial to his learning to copy it all at once. Thus we decided to make a chrome extension to make the process simpler and faster.
This project would also be beneficial to hobbyists learning a new language (and those who would do so in the future), or for international students. Having accessibility in text to speech from and to any language especially on any website would also greatly benefit our illiterate or dyslexic minority.
Transpeak is a free Google Chrome Extension that reads the text you highlight or its translation. Select the text, right-click it, and select the "Speak" option. With just two clicks, it's simple and quick to use! You can also press the extension for it to translate your highlighted text into your preferred language before reading it.
After learning how to make a Chrome Extension, we used Chrome's ContextMenus and Text-To-Speech API and some form-based HTML/JavaScript/CSS to make the GUI and the background processes. We also used Azure Microsoft's Translation and Language Detection API to make the extension more streamlined.
We are currently working on adding more flexibility to the user's speech and translation options!