I'm a software engineer who moved to the US from Nepal. For years, I watched colleagues — brilliant engineers, doctors, founders — spend more time writing emails than their American counterparts. Not because they didn't know what to say. Because translating thought → native language → English prose is exhausting mental overhead that compounds every single day.
Existing tools (Wispr Flow, Dragon, even Whisper) are built assuming you think in English. They don't handle accents well, they don't translate, and they don't adapt tone between Slack and Gmail.
So I built Oravo. You press a hotkey anywhere, speak in Spanish/Hindi/Mandarin/whatever, and it types clean English with the right tone for the app you're in. Casual in Slack, professional in email, technical in Notion.
It's free to try (30 min/month, no credit card). Currently Mac + Windows.
Honest question for the HN community: is the translation-first angle the right wedge, or should I be leading with pure dictation speed for developers? Still figuring out positioning and would love brutal feedback.
yadavraju•1h ago