Show HN: "Interactive" Italian Poetry for English Speakers | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: "Interactive" Italian Poetry for English Speakers

italianpoetry.it

187 pointsItalianPoetry49 comments

It's hard to appreciate poetry in a language one doesn't know, so this is my attempt to make Italian poetry more easily enjoyable to English speakers. The approach is probably a bit nerdy, so I hope that at least it will be of interest on HN.

I basically implemented what I would like to have when I listen to songs or poems in a language I don't speak: karaoke-like, word by word, literal translation, with notes about word usage and some context when needed.

And some stuff about the language itself --- the part needed for the poems, at least.

The tech stack is as minimal as it gets: I was hoping for an old web vibe.

Feedback welcome!

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This is absolutely fantastic. I am Italian, worked abroad for ~15 years in English speaking countries and companies, and I've always been frustrated by my inability to convey some of the greatest poems of Italian literature to my English-speaking friends.

This project of yours is brilliant.

Small pieces of feedback I have:

- allow for a quicker way to change playback speed - instead of clicking the "points", and then "playback speed", and then change the speed, make 3-4 instant buttons available (0,5x, 0,75x, 1x, 1,5x).

- if there's a youtube video of the specific poem being narrated by people like Gassman, Proietti, etc, a video added at the bottom of the page might be great. e.g. Gassman legge Pavese: "Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi" [0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny3qXRIC9YQ&list=PLfk7A2f8wT...

Thank for the suggestions!

My voice is terrible, so I'll definitely follow your latter point.

I hadn't even thought about playback speed, especially since those are all pretty quick, but I'll think about it for sure.

Your voice is not terrible, I enjoyed it quit a lot. By the way kudos to you, I'm Italian and that was interesting for me too! I'd love to have it in other languages too. Oh, and also I love the website vibes! The right mix between 2000 websites and contemporary elegance!

I was actually thinking of doing the same for Latin...

Now the infrastructure is built, so the effort should be much smaller (but I'd need of course much more support from an expert ^^ ).

Do you think it might have an audience?

I'd love to have it in languages that I don't speak with a deep poetry history, like Japanese, Indian, Persian, languages from Africa... but I guess the biggest problem there is not the infrastructure, is knowing the language.

But also Latin would be interesting, Latin has tons of great poems, even funny ones (I still remember Marziale :D )

Dude, yes! I was reading this and thinking "if only there was one for Latin..."!

There is a big Latin & Ancient Greek server on Discord, and the people over there would love your project for sure. Lots of them being Italians, it would be even better. Since you're wondering about the help of experts, there would be no better place to go to than there.

I dream of a unified platform for the classics - translation, archive of books, and so on... equidem adjuvabo si quidam tamen capiat umquam consilium. Vale!

Greek is sadly out of my reach, but I'm very curious about this Discord you mentioned.

Could you, here or by email, point it out to me? After this website has "settled" a bit, it might be fun to look into that Latin :)

I love the design of the site and it's really a dream for reading translated poetry! I enjoy reading a handful of Italian poets (and translated poetry in general), and a website like this for German, Polish, etc poetry would be lovely. Would you ever think of open sourcing this for others to attempt this for their own languages?

I'd really love to see a couple poems from the notoriously hard to translate Giacomo Leopardi - they are quite beautiful, and hearing them in Italian is a treat!

Thanks!

Yes, I was thinking of cleaning up the repo and make it public in a while, though honestly it's not too pretty ^^

And yes, Leopardi is coming: I have Il Sabato del villaggio almost ready to go :)

So I've studied German a little. I have no conversational skills and little facility reading it. But I really enjoy German poetry in the original language. My theory is that it's like the Guitar Hero version of speaking the language - it lets me play along with an expert, even though I am a rank neophyte. I would love to see this in German.

One thing that bothers me is that the cultural context is lost. I am completely oblivious to things that would be obvious to a native speaker. For instance, I like some poems by Christian Morgenstern, but is that like saying I like a Hallmark card or a Thomas Kincaid painting? I suspect it's a little bit like the latter, which is fine. The Germans I have spoken with had no interest in poetry, good or bad, so they couldn't offer any feedback.

I, conversely, lack the knowledge to quite get the allusion to a Hallmark card or a Thomas Kincaid painting.

I guess that Kincaid paintings are considered subpar by connoisseurs. That wouldnʼt be the thing with Morgenstern. He is popular, but not that popular, and was sufficiently unconventional at his time to be seen as a genuine creative artist.

That is a comparison in terms of connoisseurship (or snobbery). If I had to make a comparison in terms of how the workʼs nature, Iʼd say that the shorter poems are like Roger Price droodles.

Oh I love christian morgenstern poems but I've only ever come across a handful. the one about the man who said he doesn't exist!

Never mind, it was La sera del dì di festa. But here it is :)

https://italianpoetry.it/poems/la-sera-del-d%C3%AC-di-festa/

This is a fantastic reading, kudos to you! I'll be sharing this with my reading group, I'll let you know if they've any feedback.

Very great initiative.

I would add the year of composition in the list: 'Oct 10, Tacciono i boschi e i fiumi (1591), by Torquato Tasso'

The voice is quite good.

How will we submit requests?

Today (15 Oct 2023) is the centenary of the birth of Italo Calvino. You could have added "Le città e la memoria 1. [Diomira]", the proper opening, from "Le città invisibili".

> Partendosi di là e andando tre giornate verso levante, l’uomo si trova a Diomira, città con sessanta cupole d’argento, statue in bronzo di tutti gli dei, vie lastricate in stagno, un teatro di cristallo, un gallo d’oro che canta ogni mattina su una torre. Tutte queste bellezze il viaggiatore già conosce per averle viste anche in altre città. Ma la proprietà di questa è che chi vi arriva una sera di settembre, quando le giornate s’accorciano e le lampade multicolori s’accendono tutte insieme sulle porte delle friggitorie, e da una terrazza una voce di donna grida: uh!, gli viene da invidiare quelli che ora pensano d’aver già vissuto una sera uguale a questa e d’esser stati quella volta felici.

> I would add the year of composition in the list: 'Oct 10, Tacciono i boschi e i fiumi (1591), by Torquato Tasso'

There's a list-by-composition date page, but indeed, that makes a lot of sense. Will add!

> How will we submit requests?

Awwww please do :)

I assumed an email would be best (see Contact link in the footer), but maybe something more social? I made accounts for mastodon [1], twitter (@italian_poetry) and reddit [2] (plus BuyMeACoffee [3], for the most adventurous ^_^), which I should put somewhere on the website.

What do you think would be best? When trying to put this website out there I had to realize the hard way that I suck at social media...

[1] https://zirk.us/@italianpoetry

[2] https://old.reddit.com/user/italianpoetry/

[3] https://www.buymeacoffee.com/italianpoetry

This is nice, although I know very little Italian so I only listened to a couple of them. The only thing I could think to improve is a way of jumping from the text to the audio at that point, as after I'd listened through I wanted to hear a couple of lines again after reading the notes and had to just guess how far along it was.

It should already be implemented: middle button click.

Let me know if it doesn't work!

Doesn't work for me (in Chrome for Windows) as middle mouse toggles mouse scroll mode. Although to be fair, even if it did work, I'd never have thought to try middle mouse! If you added a button at the start of each line / paragraph, it'd be obvious the functionality exists as well as not relying on extra mouse buttons.

I'll admit it's not an obvious choice at all, but it's documented in the Guide ;)

Your idea is worth considering, but since it's at a lower granularity, I'll try and see if I there's a better way to trigger the word-level feature.

For some reason I’m fascinated by the opening lines of Dante’s inferno. I’m reading the Longfellow translation where there is Italian and English side on opposing pages. Unlike the English version, the Italian version actually rhymes, and sounds beautiful. “Nel mezzo del cammin…” keeps ringing in my ears. Then it occurred to be that this poem could be a gateway to learn italian by going back and forth between the two versions.

Would be great to see this poem included in your project

Eventually, yes, it's a must :)

The question is, which pieces. The whole thing is impossibly too long.

So far I have one request for the Paolo and Francesca episode. Feel free to suggest other parts!

Certainly, Paolo e Francesca. A classic of literature, sculpted in time.

A few years ago, I met a Greek woman, whose name was Marina. I told her—-you know that your name is in one of the most famous passages of Dante's Inferno:

"Siede la terra dove nata fui // su la marina dove 'l Po discende // per aver pace co' seguaci sui" (I wrote it from memory and then checked, the only mistake was "trovare" instead of "avere"). Dante refers to Ravenna, where Francesca da Rimini, of Paolo e Francesca, was born.

Was she impressed? I don't know, I never heard from her again.

Very cool project. I love how much thought you put into it, it really shows. One thing is I wanted to make you aware of is that the player doesn't work on MacOS Safari. Another thing that's really minor is that the font ligatures are a little distracting. Still though, amazing work. I love it and I'll keep checking in and seeing how it gets updated.

I really wish something like this existed for ancient greek.

Thanks!

I should have tested it on Apple stuff :/ Thanks for reporting, I'll check it out

> the font ligatures are a little distracting

For me too. I realize I'll get used to them but I keep getting surprised whenever I see them.

Also, since we're talking distractions: the underlined words -- when hovering over them the rest of the verse shifts right to make space for the little sign, it feels strange (and in case this is browser specific: I am using Chrome on Mac).

I hope the player is not better on Safari!

Yeah, it's working now. Very cool!

This is excellent, I was just thinking this morning I would like something like this. I was using Inferno as a way to supplement my Italian learning, but found that the side by side English translations were annoyingly attempting to read like English poetry instead of a verbatim translation.

Love it, thanks for posting. I'm in the process of building a similar app for Latin. How did you handle loading the word data in the sidebar? Is all that data stored statically, or are you using fetch API to get it from a database?

Thank you!

It's all in the initial HTML payload. Each word in Italian, its translation in English, and the corresponding sidenote, if any, all have a common `data-id`. When the mouse hovers on a word, the corresponding note gets a `.visible` class via JS.

That's very clever... I think this will save me a lot of time. Thanks so much for sharing!

Wow! You put so much effort into this! I'm German, but I am totally interested in languages in general and I love the sound of Italian. I would love to see a German / Italian version, but thank you for the great detail you put in this!

Coincidentally, I'm about to pick up my copy of Purgatorio (Anthony Esolen, translator). Up to Canto 27.

He says that he sometimes makes it rhyme, but only if it doesn't do too much damage to the English.

This is awesome! I love the podcast idea too. Is there a rss feed for the podcast? I'd love to subscribe on my podcast player so I can keep up as new poems are released

Sure!

https://italianpoetry.it/podcast/index.xml

It should also be available on fydd[1], Google podcast[2], Amazon[3] and Spotify.

I don't have an Apple device, and I'm having trouble activating my Apple account, but I hope to put it on iTunes soon too.

[1] https://fyyd.de/podcast/italian-poetry/0

[2] https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9pdGFsaWFucG9ldHJ...

[3] https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/0f2c452e-f4fe-4e64-bbe4-e9...

Perfect. Thank you!

Very cool project. Any specific reason for the choice of poems?

Thanks!

I'd say a mix of

1. What I like,

2. Lesser-known stuff, not just the usual classics

3. A wider range of topics besides the usual love stuff, including the occasional obscenities

4. Sampling across the centuries

5. Try to showcase female authors, which you rarely study at school, but I was happy to find there's plenty of to choose from, and not only in modern times

I plan to add one per week, and requests are welcome

(edit, formatting)

I am not an expert in poetry however I always loved Umberto Saba. Especially "Città vecchia".

This is really quite cool, congrats!

If I may perhaps the player widget could be a tad bigger? I initially didn't notice it at all, on mobile.

Thanks!

Make sense, I'll look into that.

Should be better now :)

This is great! I wish somebody would make something like this for Spanish.

Love those ligatures!

stunning, incredible. well done. keep up the good work.

I love this project!

Lovely. Couple of random unimportant things on the sidenotes of the Boccaccio one.

vezzeggiativo - probably worth translating to English, at least once.

per avventura - still around in English but archaic https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peradventure

> still around in English but archaic https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peradventure

Wow I didn't know that. Totally worth an update :)

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