Show HN: "Interactive" Italian Poetry for English Speakers (italianpoetry.it)
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!
50 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadI'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)
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...
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.
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?
But also Latin would be interesting, Latin has tons of great poems, even funny ones (I still remember Marziale :D )
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!
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 :)
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...
If I may perhaps the player widget could be a tad bigger? I initially didn't notice it at all, on mobile.
Make sense, I'll look into that.
Would be great to see this poem included in your project
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!
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.
Let me know if it doesn't work!
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.
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!
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 :)
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 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.
https://italianpoetry.it/poems/la-sera-del-d%C3%AC-di-festa/
vezzeggiativo - probably worth translating to English, at least once.
per avventura - still around in English but archaic https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peradventure
Wow I didn't know that. Totally worth an update :)
I really wish something like this existed for ancient greek.
I should have tested it on Apple stuff :/ Thanks for reporting, I'll check it out
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 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.
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
He says that he sometimes makes it rhyme, but only if it doesn't do too much damage to the English.
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.