7 ms·

Pinocchio is weirder than you remembered

308 points by cemsakarya 5mo ago

invalidSyntax 5mo ago
Sad I can't read Italian. I would like to know how the original non-translated version is like.
- jiggawatts 5mo ago
  An easy method these days is to get any frontier AI model to translate it for you. I've stopped relying on third-party translations because it's common for people to editorialise or miss subtleties, especially in social media... but even professional journalists.
  - bugufu8f83 5mo ago
    Your solution to "I would like to know how the original non-translated version is like." is to recommend translation software? And the idea of disregarding professional translations in favor of LLMs for quality reasons is breathtakingly...something. Arrogant? Naive?
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - uncircle 5mo ago
      Dude, you should know on here the answer the every question, including the meaning of life, these days is AI.
      - jiggawatts 5mo ago
        If you want a verbatim translation of a piece of foreign language text where your problem is specifically that human authors are editorialising their translations… then yes, AI is the solution. “You always want to use the backhoe!”, says the person with a giant hole they need excavated quickly and cheaply.
    - simiones 5mo ago
      To be fair to GP, while I agree that literary translations are still much better left to professional translators, the specific examples actually given have recently been moving in the opposite direction in my experience - at least for translations from English. In my own language, I've seen articles published in translation under license, on major local news sites, including mis-translations as ridiculous as "1000 lb bombs" translated as "1000 £ bombs" ("bombe de 1000 de lire").
      - nottorp 5mo ago
        News sites are extremely cash strapped, I bet it's all automatic translation, maybe with the exception of a few important articles, and it has been even before LLMs. On my local news sites I still see crap like english word order but Romanian words on filler articles, which means it wasn't even a LLM.
        jiggawatts 5mo ago
        During the Ukraine war I saw many Russian or Ukrainian language articles or whatever translated with just Google Translate and it was a hopeless jumble of errors. Even GPT 4 was massively better. Some people just don’t understand how general purpose these chat bots are and insist on continuing to use single purpose tools that have been left in the dust.
andai 5mo ago
Are you Claude?
- andai 5mo ago
  The whole website appears to be AI generated, including the core value proposition: books rewritten at the user's reading level (for language learning).
  - moravak1984 5mo ago
    Yep, my thoughts exactly. This comment should be at the top. The poster should disclose it is AI...
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
stuart78 5mo ago
The article mentions that 'most' translations soften the book. It looks like the recent Penguin edition attempts to present the original tone in English and there are several much more contemporary translations from the late 19th century which apparently don't attempt to pull back. I'm tempted to give it a shot, maybe see if the kids can handle it.
- abnercoimbre 5mo ago
  > the recent Penguin edition attempts to present the original tone in English Which Penguin edition is this?
  - unwind 5mo ago
    Probably [1], from 2025. [1]: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/31374/pinocchio-by-collodi-carlo/9780241736432 https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/31374/pinocchio-by-collodi-c...
riffraff 5mo ago
I re-read Pinocchio with my (bilingual) kids a couple years ago, and I think this article is spot on for some things: it is a bit more weird then I remembered, the Italian reads almost contemporary (except for a few turn of phrases and odd terms), and it has a strong pacing. Also, definitely likely you will remember some abridged version or Disneys'. I'm not convinced of the argument that it's making fun of contemporary children books: Pinocchio regularly misbehaves and gets punished for it, which seems pretty much in line with contemporary books.
ofrzeta 5mo ago
It's so creepy that my kids didn't want to hear it (being read to them) with all the burning and stuff. However they also didn't want to listen to the classic fairy tales by Grimm and Andersen which are super creepy as well. Just think of burning witches or some Anderson fairy tale I remember where one guy is put into a bag and thrown into the river. It's not that I deliberately wanted to read the most creepy stories to them but there's a creepy undertone to even the most famous and "harmless" ones, think of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and so on.
- MarsIronPI 5mo ago
  In the original Cindarella, don't the stepsisters mutilate their feet to try to fit them into the slipper? Talk about single-minded obsession...
bryanrasmussen 5mo ago
Some of these things described as "weirder" really aren't. For example, Pinocchio burning his feet off and getting them replaced by Gepetto - this is a comical example of things implied by the story premise. We have a child carved of wood, a flesh and blood child burns off their feet is a tragedy, but carved of wood we make new feet, hah hah! Not saying this particular incident is to be expected exactly, but events of this type are to be expected from any competent writer who has taken up the premise. Especially as it is structured as a picaresque fairy tale, it would be weird if this kind of thing didn't happen. Also - The fairy, originally a corpse - why is a dead revenant of some sort bringing a puppet to life any weirder than a magical fairy? That's not weirder, just different than we've been told.
- rob74 5mo ago
  It's "weird" if you compare it with modern-day "child-safe" stories/comics/movies. It's definitely not weirder or more shocking than its contemporaries or predecessors. Here in Germany, the most well-known ones from that era are probably Grimms' Fairy Tales (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales), Struwwelpeter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter) and Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_and_Moritz#Final_Trick:_The_Farmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_and_Moritz#Final_Trick:_Th...).
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ahartmetz 5mo ago
    Wihelm Busch stories are the only ones that I remember really scaring me. They were cruel as hell. Heads cut off with scissors, a nose twisted off, kids thrown into the mill (Max und Moritz, well that was presented in a light-hearted way compared to many others), various limbs removed, cursed to live under water by / with a cruel and ugly (male) mermaid-type thing https://www.zootier-lexikon.org/images/Amphibienprogramm/Lehrmaterialien/Geschichten/vzp_Busch_die_beiden_schwestern.pdf https://www.zootier-lexikon.org/images/Amphibienprogramm/Leh... , etc...
shermantanktop 5mo ago
The children’s literature that was written prior to about 1900 is generally darker, more violent and threatening than what came after. Struwwelpeter anyone? We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it. That’s probably the Victorian era, when childhood is said to have been “invented.”
- hulitu 5mo ago
  > We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it. Yes. And we gave children Disney and television or Netflix, with only violence, with, when existing, a dumbed down plot.
- Joker_vD 5mo ago
  > We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it. On one hand, if we want the children to grow up into the better world, and for them to keep making it better as adults, perhaps we should set up in their minds more examples of the better world, than of the worse kind of the world. Sounds somewhat reasonable? On the other hand, there is this "shattered assumptions theory" of psychological trauma: that such traumas are caused by the reality violently shattering one of three core assumptions, one of which is "overall benevolence of the world". So it can be argued that the more you try to shield children from the unpleasantness, the more traumatized their experience will be when they inevitably meet it; vice versa, someone's who never really assumed the world is all the benevolent ("yeah, there are nice parts of it, but you have to maintain and upkeep them") can't have that assumption shattered since he never held it. One of the main themes of Lovecraft's work is that a man is alone in a vast, uncaring universe filled with terrible, powerful, and unknown things. Which is factually true, of course, and is not really that scary of a thought — unless you're a devout Christian who had a sudden crisis of faith, got interested in astronomy, and then lived through WWI. In this case having a benevolent God who made the world for its beloved children replaced by an empty mechanistic universe where life has sprang up mostly accidentally is indeed quite a traumatic experience. Others would those "things the man weren't meant to know" quite unpleasant, sure, but being driven to madness simply because apparently the rest of the universe doesn't revolve around humanity? Yeah, we knew that already, it's not news.
shevy-java 5mo ago
> Blue Fairy — first introduced as a literal child-corpse with turquoise hair He may have run out of ideas and tried to fill in a story with a dark mood in mind (speculation). The thing is that this is not that uncommon in many fantasy novels. Anyone remembers "The Color of Her Panties" by Piers Anthony? I read it, it is very cheesy (also silly, in particular when you as target audience are, say, 10 years old or something like that) but not necessarily mega-creepy either. But then you also begin to wonder ... is it just "good fun" to pick such a title? But then it is not the only instance and you begin to find more oddities. Naturally this depends on the author; some authors never run into such issues, others run into such issues. I only saw the Pinocchio cartoon, that anime-style animation, on TV. That version was harmless from what I remember. Never read the books, but I am not so surprised about books being darker. Anyone knows the Grimm brothers? They lived from 1785–1863 and 1786–1859 respectively. I clearly remember that some of those drawings were really dark. It's a bit like dark horror stories if you look at it today - here is a summary: https://discover.hubpages.com/literature/Grimms-Fairy-Tales-A-Look-at-Dark-Stories-for-Children https://discover.hubpages.com/literature/Grimms-Fairy-Tales-... It starts with "There are some fairy tales that are just not meant for kids.". Some of the pictures by Grimm or illustrators are quite scary, such as the bleeding or weeping out of eyes ... is gross. Possibly these were more for adults, or adults who did not care, such as Pinocchio - perhaps. A puppet that has a growing body part ... that in itself is already super-weird. Are we certain the nose was meant? Is Pinocchio ... a prison item???
shmerl 5mo ago
It is weird even in the current version. Totally a horror story, not a children's tale.
notorandit 5mo ago
It would (maybe?) sound like an inappropriate book for children. Yes, in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Not so in either 19th and 21st centuries. In 19th century Italian (but maybe also other countries') children had to grow quickly to cope with life and work brutalities. They often had no mother, died while giving them birth, and started working at 7 or 8 to help their families. In 20th century, instead, they have been constantly exposed to either real life violence and harshness (like war) or fiction brutality from movies, cartoons and video games. Nope, Pinocchio is not that weird. It is when compared to an idyllic and peaceful world that has never existed but in our wishful thinking minds.
- paulluuk 5mo ago
  The book was never written for children, it was a satirist writing for adults under the guise of a children's book, just as it wrote under the guise of "travel guides". Even at the time, this work was considered weird and not in line with the morality of children's literature. But even if you accept that children's lives back then were particularly brutal and this was in fact meant as a children's book: there is no evidence to suggest that exposing children to brutality in books will somehow help them function in a brutal world. If anything, I would think that such children especially need something "beautiful" in their lives: the fairy who comes with good advice, the dragon slain in the end, the lost child who finds their way home. A bit of hope. But I'm not a pedagogue, just a dad.
  - mmarq 5mo ago
    Pinocchio was published in 1–2-page instalments in “Giornale per i bambini”, a magazine for children.
  - kakacik 5mo ago
    I dont think you are correct. In many parts of Europe, dark folk tales told kids from early age were the norm till very recently. I read and heard such, and they were brutal. Did they prepare me better for life? Nobody can answer that without time machine. For certain they didnt instill any trauma, you need real world for that and not fantasy. Dont treat kids like some fragile porcelaine dumb beings, they grok most of real world fast, see all the bad parts and can handle it way better than overprotective parents like to admit. They often cant express their thinking effectively but they see, hear and understand most of the adult world well. I certainly read those stories too to my kids.
arjie 5mo ago
When I was a child in India, the fairy tale books that you could get easily were a bunch of Eastern European ones: Russian, Karelian, that sort of thing. And they were full of crazy stuff, man. The cossacks were constantly getting their heads cut off and this and that. I went back to India a year ago, and one of the things I made sure to bring back were my copies of those books (and the Journey to the West translations that I read as a child - also easily available at the time) along with the stories by the Brothers Grimm. As one does these days, I asked an LLM to help me detect if I had a bowdlerized version, and while I'm sure the stories were already softened in translation, they're still far more 'rowdy' than stories you can easily find today. In the old folk tales, things just happen. Fairness isn't guaranteed; and sometimes a guy makes a deal and gets eaten anyway; and sometimes someone dies for no reason. I wonder if the changing narrative structure of modern stories is a result of our improved civilization. In a world where you're probably reaching adulthood with your brothers and sisters without encountering any sibling death, a story with 'unfair' death and destruction probably feels out of place. Nonetheless, I sometimes am saddened when I read people talk about stories in media and how they 'glorify' bad behaviour or 'send the wrong message'. A thing I really treasure from childhood is the breadth of storytelling: not all stories were an Aesop's fable. But perhaps that's not true. I suspect the truth is that with lowered barriers to publishing there are just more stories told. The ones from the past that we know are twice selected: once for cultural value, and once because the writer himself was selected. Today, anyone can write, so it's the same problem as we encounter when we look at personal websites today. Sampled randomly in 2004 you would get interesting ones easily. Today, that is not so easy. This is most easily visible with foreign media. The Chinese stories I've read are alien and strange and interesting; and the Japanese ones take unexpected turns. But they're going through that selection process as well. So it's probably just a boring selection effect. Still, I've got the old Grimms. I'm keeping that one as an heirloom.
- fleroviumna 5mo ago
  [dead]
- Terr_ 5mo ago
  > In a world where you're probably reaching adulthood with your brothers and sisters without encountering any sibling death, a story with 'unfair' death Two hot-take theories to add onto the pile: 1. In a traveling oral tradition, the teller doesn't want to memorize lots of different versions known in different towns or regions, and they also don't want people to get angry that your version doesn't have some key things from how they remember it. This leads to compromises that don't quite fit together. 2. If you can only store one version, you've got to decide between "fun" versus "faithfully honors the memory of our elders and how they told it", and maybe the latter wins. However with the printing press etc., now there's room to do a bit of both, and the fun version sells better.
geophph 5mo ago
Lies of P is a fantastic video game (soulslike) that felt to me like a dark take on the Pinocchio story at first, but now maybe seems more in line with the original material. A lot of the references carry through.
- pawelduda 5mo ago
  The game's way darker still but it doesn't feel overdone. You can tell a lot of soul was poured into it. Nice to know that it all somehow traces back to its source I remember hearing about "Pinnocchio soulslike" and just couldn't imagine how that'd work. Now it's one of my favourites - especially with the expansion.
  - geophph 5mo ago
    Agreed Overture was fantastic! Looking forward to the sequel. And yeah, you’re right it’s wayyy darker ha.
  - dugidugout 5mo ago
    I personally could not stomach the clocktower. I may just be bad at platforming, but the stage felt jarringly frustrating compared to the pleasant frustration I was having with the rest of the games challenges. After my 10th or so time getting blasted by a fireball while inching across a beam, I made my peace. It is a shame because I very much enjoyed the premise and world otherwise.
    - pawelduda 5mo ago
      About every soulslike has to have this one anxiety-inducing platforming section. I saw a lot of players complain about this particular part but IMO it's wasn't the most frustrating one:D
- taeric 5mo ago
  I was curious on this when it came out. There are some really good youtube videos of folks taking a dive on this and it was a delight to watch them.
_ZeD_ 5mo ago
if you're interested on liberliber[1] you can find some of Collodi's works in epub and audiobook formats (in italian) [1] https://liberliber.it/autori/autori-c/carlo-collodi-alias-carlo-lorenzini/ https://liberliber.it/autori/autori-c/carlo-collodi-alias-ca...
toyg 5mo ago
It's not entirely correct that the government "chose Tuscan" as the language to push. The literary tradition was already rooted into a vulgata that happened to be mostly similar to the languages spoken in the areas between Roma and Firenze - unsurprisingly so, considering they had traditionally been the wealthiest parts of the country for centuries. In this context of broad intellectual agreement on the fundamentals, Alessandro Manzoni then published a few works that explicitly tried to formalize the language, sprinkling northern inflections on top of the traditional core. These works were later used as the model by authorities, who forced them on the national curriculum.
- moravak1984 5mo ago
  Yes, but Claude (cleverly disguised as "storica.club") does not agree with the facts, and would rather show you a story with virality potential. This is an obviously AI-generated site. There is no interest on correctness, just "engagement".
  - fractallyte 5mo ago
    What are the Claude "indications"? Because there's a danger now that any writing (human or otherwise) can be labeled LLM-produced. So we need accurate heuristics, or none at all.
    - duskdozer 5mo ago
      Looks like probably not Claude based on their privacy/terms: >AI-powered feedback >Storica uses artificial intelligence (OpenAI) to provide feedback on your writing. Your written content is sent to OpenAI's API to generate corrections and suggestions. We do not use your writing content to train AI models. Your writing is processed solely to provide you with immediate feedback. It does look LLM-generated though.
    - moravak1984 5mo ago
      The copy on the main page gives a first clue. "A daily reading club for language learners" available on 7 languages, on a .club domain... Now, look at the number of books on each language. Does it sound reasonable that a no-name startup with no contact details (except an email to an aktivlang.com domain that redirects to storica.club) will invest in a serious effort to human-translate and adapt that many books to language learners, without anyone noticing? I'm not going to argue about the writing style because we know it is an arms race. But look at the underlying business, that business would not exist without AI generated content.
junto 5mo ago
I’ve never seen the Disney film. As a child I hated that story. My own children have no love for it either. If I was to guess, I’d say that there isn’t much of a character in that story to get behind and to empathize with as a child. Pinocchio is a selfish little shit. I can’t like him. As an adult I feel for his father’s desperation but even then I could never understand the story’s popularity appeal.
- byteface 5mo ago
  He's is selfish. Also cruel but funny, very gullible, often impulslive... alive. He was ported to Russian too but they called him Burattino (Italian for 'puppet'). The image of burratino goes back hundreds of years before the story was ever written. He was one of the Zanni characters alongside other lower-class mischevious, comedic 'naughty' (anti-authority) characters like Harlequin.
  - gobdovan 5mo ago
    As a Romanian child, I saw both Pinocchio and Burattino plays, but somehow never made the connection! This is quite interesting. Burattino was akin to a comedy to me, Pinocchio was like a drama.
- gobdovan 5mo ago
  I love exactly what you hate about it. I would not read it to a small child, but I would dearly recommend it to a 10- to 15-year-old. I reread it as an adult and loved it. Pinocchio is mean, undisciplined, hedonistic, disrespectful, naive, and, of course, a liar. As soon as he is created, he runs away and behaves selfishly and impulsively. Then he pays for each flaw with scars. The story shows him learning these lessons on his own wooden skin. It is a moral story in the deepest sense. It shows what feels to me almost like "forbidden" knowledge. There is no magical thinking in it; it is not trying to preach "Doing bad things is bad, full stop". Instead, the author shows realistic consequences and the full messiness of being in the world. It shows exactly how naivety can result in exploitation (the Fox and the Cat stealing from him after promising him easy riches), laziness in humiliation (skipping school and ending up forced to perform for strangers; he loses his agency and is released only by Mangiafuoco's arbitrary mercy), vanity in manipulation (he is steered by praise, attention, and promises of fame), dishonesty in isolation (his lies literally disfiguring him in front of others, making him ridiculous and impossible to hide), and hedonism in literal dehumanization (Pleasure Island turning boys into donkeys). It is quite rare for a children's book to be so honest about all the vile things in the world, and to show so directly that these things exist and that their consequences are not clean or neat either. It also shows how we learn as humans. We do not start out good or bad and stay that way; we are not born "finished". We start as little monsters, full of impulses and feelings we cannot control or do not yet know how to interpret. Yet we learn by acting on them and seeing where they lead us. We are messy creatures, and Pinocchio makes it visible. I believe reading it made me a more robust person with a more sophisticated view of the world.
culebron21 5mo ago
Interesting read, wouldn't have thought this of Pinocchio. Sadly, when I was learning Italian, I was reading more sophisticated things like Il Fu Mattia Pascal, with quite superficial understanding.
klez 5mo ago
If you want a film version that is more faithful to the original book, I suggest you watch the 2019 Garrone movie [0]. There's Benigni in It, but this time he plays Geppetto and he's not as insufferable as he can be. And the rest of the cast is very good too (many beloved comedians including the late Gigi Proietti). I have no idea if this stayed only in Italy or if it has been translated to other languages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio_(2019_film)
rob74 5mo ago
> The Italian is plain enough that an early learner with a textbook behind them can finish a chapter in a sitting. Hm, that gave me an idea... sounds like a fun way to learn Italian if you already have some basic knowledge?
zem 5mo ago
the bit about the simple language is interesting, since one of my strongest memories of reading the english translation of the book as a kid is that I learnt two new words from it, "alabaster" and "temple" (as in the side of the head).
razorbeamz 5mo ago
LLM written article.
blks 5mo ago
Russian/Soviet version of Pinocchio called “Buratino” is much nicer. Pinocchio is very individualistic and moralising, everything is a moral lesson or a bible reference. Buratino is very light and kind, main hero learns valuable lessons and defeats main bad guy with his friends, frees them from slavery and they end up getting their own theatre.
larodi 5mo ago
Like many other children’s books whxih stood the test of time, those we assume are written for children are more a cautionary tales for adults that children also tend to like as they (still) are lacking understanding of notions such as humility, compassion and all the abstract stuff we now know forms after age 10-12. The good Tom and Jerry episodes are completely devoid of tact and care, yet marvellous as entertainment .
yowo 5mo ago
> This is, again, a children's book. Children are capable of understanding cruelty, pain, death, suffering, in young age, overprotectiveness is why we have many >20 y/o people who can't speak for themselves and are overly shy.
- gchamonlive 5mo ago
  > overprotectiveness is why we have many >20 y/o people who can't speak for themselves and are overly shy. Is this even true or is it just your personal impression?
  - anbotero 5mo ago
    I'd like numbers/evidence on it too, but for my own generation, I compared my cousins for years precisely about overprotectiveness, and those who were only protected against extreme imminent danger have succeeded in life way further (for their starting conditions, socially and economically) than those who had my aunts all over them not letting them fall and have scrapes. Anecdotally, again, the parents of those who did NOT fall on dirt were much more wealthy, so these cousins of course inherited (so to speak, their parents aren't dead) the wealth and status, but gosh, they do everything they are told to do, what to study, etc. While those who did fall frequently when babies these days have generated about half of the wealth the others inherited and they are vocal, really nice professionals and of course awesome people to spend time with. Girls were more protected than boys, regardless of everything else.
    - gchamonlive 5mo ago
      I'm not disputing that, my gripe is with the part ">20 y/o people can't speak for themselves and are overly shy". Can we really put an entire generation under this flag? Idk... I've met some 20 somethings and they seemed pretty functional to me.
      - phainopepla2 5mo ago
        You conveniently left out the the "we have many" part of that sentence you quoted. No one is suggesting it's the entire generation, or that there aren't plenty of 20-somethings who socially very functional. But there is evidence out there that Gen Z has higher levels of shyness and social anxiety than previous generations. I personally believe overprotectiveness is one causative factor among others, although I'm not sure whether the evidence is there.
skc 5mo ago
I was way too young when I read this book. Absolutely devoured it and had nightmares for a long time.
icemelt8 5mo ago
AI slop
coffeecantcode 5mo ago
Jacob Geller has a fantastic video essay (and written essay with annotations) on this topic, I suggest checking it out.
virtualritz 5mo ago
On that note, there is a recent live action Pinocchio film [1] that is very faithful to the book and absolutely magical; with Roberto Benigni playing Geppetto no less. It has some highly entertaining scathing reviews on Amazon of not being family-safe and faithful to "the original" from people who think Pinocchio was invented by Disney and use the animated movie as a reference for their critiques. As hilarious as it is sad. Remembering my dad reading us Pinocchio as a kids and visiting Tuscany around that time, too, with my family, this movie is as close to what I can remember imagining it, as it gets. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rIcXgMx7hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rIcXgMx7hU
- spacechild1 5mo ago
  Wow, thanks for the tip!
binyu 5mo ago
Pinocchio had definitely some sociopathic traits as a character. The Pinocchio movie by Walt Disney from 1940 is a masterpiece. Highly recommended.
sedatk 5mo ago
> swallowed by un Pesce-cane — a dogfish, a kind of shark Dogfish in Turkish, “köpekbalığı”, also literally means shark.
NoSalt 5mo ago
As I have aged out of childhood into and through adulthood, I have discovered that MANY of my beloved childhood stories are ... "weirder" than I remember.
wslh 5mo ago
Tim Burton's Pinocchio was cancelled, but reading this, I can imagine this could have been his director's cut.
ardline 5mo ago
Solid work. The devil's in the operational complexity, but this looks manageable.

308 points by cemsakarya 5mo ago

invalidSyntax 5mo ago

Sad I can't read Italian. I would like to know how the original non-translated version is like.

jiggawatts 5mo ago
An easy method these days is to get any frontier AI model to translate it for you. I've stopped relying on third-party translations because it's common for people to editorialise or miss subtleties, especially in social media... but even professional journalists.
- bugufu8f83 5mo ago
  Your solution to "I would like to know how the original non-translated version is like." is to recommend translation software? And the idea of disregarding professional translations in favor of LLMs for quality reasons is breathtakingly...something. Arrogant? Naive?
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - uncircle 5mo ago
    Dude, you should know on here the answer the every question, including the meaning of life, these days is AI.
    - jiggawatts 5mo ago
      If you want a verbatim translation of a piece of foreign language text where your problem is specifically that human authors are editorialising their translations… then yes, AI is the solution. “You always want to use the backhoe!”, says the person with a giant hole they need excavated quickly and cheaply.
  - simiones 5mo ago
    To be fair to GP, while I agree that literary translations are still much better left to professional translators, the specific examples actually given have recently been moving in the opposite direction in my experience - at least for translations from English. In my own language, I've seen articles published in translation under license, on major local news sites, including mis-translations as ridiculous as "1000 lb bombs" translated as "1000 £ bombs" ("bombe de 1000 de lire").
    - nottorp 5mo ago
      News sites are extremely cash strapped, I bet it's all automatic translation, maybe with the exception of a few important articles, and it has been even before LLMs. On my local news sites I still see crap like english word order but Romanian words on filler articles, which means it wasn't even a LLM.
      - jiggawatts 5mo ago
        During the Ukraine war I saw many Russian or Ukrainian language articles or whatever translated with just Google Translate and it was a hopeless jumble of errors. Even GPT 4 was massively better. Some people just don’t understand how general purpose these chat bots are and insist on continuing to use single purpose tools that have been left in the dust.

andai 5mo ago

Are you Claude?

andai 5mo ago
The whole website appears to be AI generated, including the core value proposition: books rewritten at the user's reading level (for language learning).
- moravak1984 5mo ago
  Yep, my thoughts exactly. This comment should be at the top. The poster should disclose it is AI...
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

stuart78 5mo ago

The article mentions that 'most' translations soften the book. It looks like the recent Penguin edition attempts to present the original tone in English and there are several much more contemporary translations from the late 19th century which apparently don't attempt to pull back. I'm tempted to give it a shot, maybe see if the kids can handle it.

abnercoimbre 5mo ago
> the recent Penguin edition attempts to present the original tone in English Which Penguin edition is this?
- unwind 5mo ago
  Probably [1], from 2025. [1]: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/31374/pinocchio-by-collodi-carlo/9780241736432 https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/31374/pinocchio-by-collodi-c...

riffraff 5mo ago

I re-read Pinocchio with my (bilingual) kids a couple years ago, and I think this article is spot on for some things: it is a bit more weird then I remembered, the Italian reads almost contemporary (except for a few turn of phrases and odd terms), and it has a strong pacing. Also, definitely likely you will remember some abridged version or Disneys'. I'm not convinced of the argument that it's making fun of contemporary children books: Pinocchio regularly misbehaves and gets punished for it, which seems pretty much in line with contemporary books.

ofrzeta 5mo ago

It's so creepy that my kids didn't want to hear it (being read to them) with all the burning and stuff. However they also didn't want to listen to the classic fairy tales by Grimm and Andersen which are super creepy as well. Just think of burning witches or some Anderson fairy tale I remember where one guy is put into a bag and thrown into the river. It's not that I deliberately wanted to read the most creepy stories to them but there's a creepy undertone to even the most famous and "harmless" ones, think of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and so on.

MarsIronPI 5mo ago
In the original Cindarella, don't the stepsisters mutilate their feet to try to fit them into the slipper? Talk about single-minded obsession...

bryanrasmussen 5mo ago

Some of these things described as "weirder" really aren't. For example, Pinocchio burning his feet off and getting them replaced by Gepetto - this is a comical example of things implied by the story premise. We have a child carved of wood, a flesh and blood child burns off their feet is a tragedy, but carved of wood we make new feet, hah hah! Not saying this particular incident is to be expected exactly, but events of this type are to be expected from any competent writer who has taken up the premise. Especially as it is structured as a picaresque fairy tale, it would be weird if this kind of thing didn't happen. Also - The fairy, originally a corpse - why is a dead revenant of some sort bringing a puppet to life any weirder than a magical fairy? That's not weirder, just different than we've been told.

rob74 5mo ago
It's "weird" if you compare it with modern-day "child-safe" stories/comics/movies. It's definitely not weirder or more shocking than its contemporaries or predecessors. Here in Germany, the most well-known ones from that era are probably Grimms' Fairy Tales (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms%27_Fairy_Tales), Struwwelpeter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter) and Wilhelm Busch's Max und Moritz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_and_Moritz#Final_Trick:_The_Farmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_and_Moritz#Final_Trick:_Th...).
- deleted 5mo ago
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- ahartmetz 5mo ago
  Wihelm Busch stories are the only ones that I remember really scaring me. They were cruel as hell. Heads cut off with scissors, a nose twisted off, kids thrown into the mill (Max und Moritz, well that was presented in a light-hearted way compared to many others), various limbs removed, cursed to live under water by / with a cruel and ugly (male) mermaid-type thing https://www.zootier-lexikon.org/images/Amphibienprogramm/Lehrmaterialien/Geschichten/vzp_Busch_die_beiden_schwestern.pdf https://www.zootier-lexikon.org/images/Amphibienprogramm/Leh... , etc...

shermantanktop 5mo ago

The children’s literature that was written prior to about 1900 is generally darker, more violent and threatening than what came after. Struwwelpeter anyone? We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it. That’s probably the Victorian era, when childhood is said to have been “invented.”

hulitu 5mo ago
> We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it. Yes. And we gave children Disney and television or Netflix, with only violence, with, when existing, a dumbed down plot.
Joker_vD 5mo ago
> We decided at some point that these themes were no longer fit for children despite generations having been raised with it. On one hand, if we want the children to grow up into the better world, and for them to keep making it better as adults, perhaps we should set up in their minds more examples of the better world, than of the worse kind of the world. Sounds somewhat reasonable? On the other hand, there is this "shattered assumptions theory" of psychological trauma: that such traumas are caused by the reality violently shattering one of three core assumptions, one of which is "overall benevolence of the world". So it can be argued that the more you try to shield children from the unpleasantness, the more traumatized their experience will be when they inevitably meet it; vice versa, someone's who never really assumed the world is all the benevolent ("yeah, there are nice parts of it, but you have to maintain and upkeep them") can't have that assumption shattered since he never held it. One of the main themes of Lovecraft's work is that a man is alone in a vast, uncaring universe filled with terrible, powerful, and unknown things. Which is factually true, of course, and is not really that scary of a thought — unless you're a devout Christian who had a sudden crisis of faith, got interested in astronomy, and then lived through WWI. In this case having a benevolent God who made the world for its beloved children replaced by an empty mechanistic universe where life has sprang up mostly accidentally is indeed quite a traumatic experience. Others would those "things the man weren't meant to know" quite unpleasant, sure, but being driven to madness simply because apparently the rest of the universe doesn't revolve around humanity? Yeah, we knew that already, it's not news.

shevy-java 5mo ago

> Blue Fairy — first introduced as a literal child-corpse with turquoise hair He may have run out of ideas and tried to fill in a story with a dark mood in mind (speculation). The thing is that this is not that uncommon in many fantasy novels. Anyone remembers "The Color of Her Panties" by Piers Anthony? I read it, it is very cheesy (also silly, in particular when you as target audience are, say, 10 years old or something like that) but not necessarily mega-creepy either. But then you also begin to wonder ... is it just "good fun" to pick such a title? But then it is not the only instance and you begin to find more oddities. Naturally this depends on the author; some authors never run into such issues, others run into such issues. I only saw the Pinocchio cartoon, that anime-style animation, on TV. That version was harmless from what I remember. Never read the books, but I am not so surprised about books being darker. Anyone knows the Grimm brothers? They lived from 1785–1863 and 1786–1859 respectively. I clearly remember that some of those drawings were really dark. It's a bit like dark horror stories if you look at it today - here is a summary: https://discover.hubpages.com/literature/Grimms-Fairy-Tales-A-Look-at-Dark-Stories-for-Children https://discover.hubpages.com/literature/Grimms-Fairy-Tales-... It starts with "There are some fairy tales that are just not meant for kids.". Some of the pictures by Grimm or illustrators are quite scary, such as the bleeding or weeping out of eyes ... is gross. Possibly these were more for adults, or adults who did not care, such as Pinocchio - perhaps. A puppet that has a growing body part ... that in itself is already super-weird. Are we certain the nose was meant? Is Pinocchio ... a prison item???

shmerl 5mo ago

It is weird even in the current version. Totally a horror story, not a children's tale.

notorandit 5mo ago

It would (maybe?) sound like an inappropriate book for children. Yes, in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Not so in either 19th and 21st centuries. In 19th century Italian (but maybe also other countries') children had to grow quickly to cope with life and work brutalities. They often had no mother, died while giving them birth, and started working at 7 or 8 to help their families. In 20th century, instead, they have been constantly exposed to either real life violence and harshness (like war) or fiction brutality from movies, cartoons and video games. Nope, Pinocchio is not that weird. It is when compared to an idyllic and peaceful world that has never existed but in our wishful thinking minds.

paulluuk 5mo ago
The book was never written for children, it was a satirist writing for adults under the guise of a children's book, just as it wrote under the guise of "travel guides". Even at the time, this work was considered weird and not in line with the morality of children's literature. But even if you accept that children's lives back then were particularly brutal and this was in fact meant as a children's book: there is no evidence to suggest that exposing children to brutality in books will somehow help them function in a brutal world. If anything, I would think that such children especially need something "beautiful" in their lives: the fairy who comes with good advice, the dragon slain in the end, the lost child who finds their way home. A bit of hope. But I'm not a pedagogue, just a dad.
- mmarq 5mo ago
  Pinocchio was published in 1–2-page instalments in “Giornale per i bambini”, a magazine for children.
- kakacik 5mo ago
  I dont think you are correct. In many parts of Europe, dark folk tales told kids from early age were the norm till very recently. I read and heard such, and they were brutal. Did they prepare me better for life? Nobody can answer that without time machine. For certain they didnt instill any trauma, you need real world for that and not fantasy. Dont treat kids like some fragile porcelaine dumb beings, they grok most of real world fast, see all the bad parts and can handle it way better than overprotective parents like to admit. They often cant express their thinking effectively but they see, hear and understand most of the adult world well. I certainly read those stories too to my kids.

arjie 5mo ago

When I was a child in India, the fairy tale books that you could get easily were a bunch of Eastern European ones: Russian, Karelian, that sort of thing. And they were full of crazy stuff, man. The cossacks were constantly getting their heads cut off and this and that. I went back to India a year ago, and one of the things I made sure to bring back were my copies of those books (and the Journey to the West translations that I read as a child - also easily available at the time) along with the stories by the Brothers Grimm. As one does these days, I asked an LLM to help me detect if I had a bowdlerized version, and while I'm sure the stories were already softened in translation, they're still far more 'rowdy' than stories you can easily find today. In the old folk tales, things just happen. Fairness isn't guaranteed; and sometimes a guy makes a deal and gets eaten anyway; and sometimes someone dies for no reason. I wonder if the changing narrative structure of modern stories is a result of our improved civilization. In a world where you're probably reaching adulthood with your brothers and sisters without encountering any sibling death, a story with 'unfair' death and destruction probably feels out of place. Nonetheless, I sometimes am saddened when I read people talk about stories in media and how they 'glorify' bad behaviour or 'send the wrong message'. A thing I really treasure from childhood is the breadth of storytelling: not all stories were an Aesop's fable. But perhaps that's not true. I suspect the truth is that with lowered barriers to publishing there are just more stories told. The ones from the past that we know are twice selected: once for cultural value, and once because the writer himself was selected. Today, anyone can write, so it's the same problem as we encounter when we look at personal websites today. Sampled randomly in 2004 you would get interesting ones easily. Today, that is not so easy. This is most easily visible with foreign media. The Chinese stories I've read are alien and strange and interesting; and the Japanese ones take unexpected turns. But they're going through that selection process as well. So it's probably just a boring selection effect. Still, I've got the old Grimms. I'm keeping that one as an heirloom.

fleroviumna 5mo ago
[dead]
Terr_ 5mo ago
> In a world where you're probably reaching adulthood with your brothers and sisters without encountering any sibling death, a story with 'unfair' death Two hot-take theories to add onto the pile: 1. In a traveling oral tradition, the teller doesn't want to memorize lots of different versions known in different towns or regions, and they also don't want people to get angry that your version doesn't have some key things from how they remember it. This leads to compromises that don't quite fit together. 2. If you can only store one version, you've got to decide between "fun" versus "faithfully honors the memory of our elders and how they told it", and maybe the latter wins. However with the printing press etc., now there's room to do a bit of both, and the fun version sells better.

geophph 5mo ago

Lies of P is a fantastic video game (soulslike) that felt to me like a dark take on the Pinocchio story at first, but now maybe seems more in line with the original material. A lot of the references carry through.

pawelduda 5mo ago
The game's way darker still but it doesn't feel overdone. You can tell a lot of soul was poured into it. Nice to know that it all somehow traces back to its source I remember hearing about "Pinnocchio soulslike" and just couldn't imagine how that'd work. Now it's one of my favourites - especially with the expansion.
- geophph 5mo ago
  Agreed Overture was fantastic! Looking forward to the sequel. And yeah, you’re right it’s wayyy darker ha.
- dugidugout 5mo ago
  I personally could not stomach the clocktower. I may just be bad at platforming, but the stage felt jarringly frustrating compared to the pleasant frustration I was having with the rest of the games challenges. After my 10th or so time getting blasted by a fireball while inching across a beam, I made my peace. It is a shame because I very much enjoyed the premise and world otherwise.
  - pawelduda 5mo ago
    About every soulslike has to have this one anxiety-inducing platforming section. I saw a lot of players complain about this particular part but IMO it's wasn't the most frustrating one:D
taeric 5mo ago
I was curious on this when it came out. There are some really good youtube videos of folks taking a dive on this and it was a delight to watch them.

_ZeD_ 5mo ago

if you're interested on liberliber[1] you can find some of Collodi's works in epub and audiobook formats (in italian) [1] https://liberliber.it/autori/autori-c/carlo-collodi-alias-carlo-lorenzini/ https://liberliber.it/autori/autori-c/carlo-collodi-alias-ca...

toyg 5mo ago

It's not entirely correct that the government "chose Tuscan" as the language to push. The literary tradition was already rooted into a vulgata that happened to be mostly similar to the languages spoken in the areas between Roma and Firenze - unsurprisingly so, considering they had traditionally been the wealthiest parts of the country for centuries. In this context of broad intellectual agreement on the fundamentals, Alessandro Manzoni then published a few works that explicitly tried to formalize the language, sprinkling northern inflections on top of the traditional core. These works were later used as the model by authorities, who forced them on the national curriculum.

moravak1984 5mo ago
Yes, but Claude (cleverly disguised as "storica.club") does not agree with the facts, and would rather show you a story with virality potential. This is an obviously AI-generated site. There is no interest on correctness, just "engagement".
- fractallyte 5mo ago
  What are the Claude "indications"? Because there's a danger now that any writing (human or otherwise) can be labeled LLM-produced. So we need accurate heuristics, or none at all.
  - duskdozer 5mo ago
    Looks like probably not Claude based on their privacy/terms: >AI-powered feedback >Storica uses artificial intelligence (OpenAI) to provide feedback on your writing. Your written content is sent to OpenAI's API to generate corrections and suggestions. We do not use your writing content to train AI models. Your writing is processed solely to provide you with immediate feedback. It does look LLM-generated though.
  - moravak1984 5mo ago
    The copy on the main page gives a first clue. "A daily reading club for language learners" available on 7 languages, on a .club domain... Now, look at the number of books on each language. Does it sound reasonable that a no-name startup with no contact details (except an email to an aktivlang.com domain that redirects to storica.club) will invest in a serious effort to human-translate and adapt that many books to language learners, without anyone noticing? I'm not going to argue about the writing style because we know it is an arms race. But look at the underlying business, that business would not exist without AI generated content.

junto 5mo ago

I’ve never seen the Disney film. As a child I hated that story. My own children have no love for it either. If I was to guess, I’d say that there isn’t much of a character in that story to get behind and to empathize with as a child. Pinocchio is a selfish little shit. I can’t like him. As an adult I feel for his father’s desperation but even then I could never understand the story’s popularity appeal.

byteface 5mo ago
He's is selfish. Also cruel but funny, very gullible, often impulslive... alive. He was ported to Russian too but they called him Burattino (Italian for 'puppet'). The image of burratino goes back hundreds of years before the story was ever written. He was one of the Zanni characters alongside other lower-class mischevious, comedic 'naughty' (anti-authority) characters like Harlequin.
- gobdovan 5mo ago
  As a Romanian child, I saw both Pinocchio and Burattino plays, but somehow never made the connection! This is quite interesting. Burattino was akin to a comedy to me, Pinocchio was like a drama.
gobdovan 5mo ago
I love exactly what you hate about it. I would not read it to a small child, but I would dearly recommend it to a 10- to 15-year-old. I reread it as an adult and loved it. Pinocchio is mean, undisciplined, hedonistic, disrespectful, naive, and, of course, a liar. As soon as he is created, he runs away and behaves selfishly and impulsively. Then he pays for each flaw with scars. The story shows him learning these lessons on his own wooden skin. It is a moral story in the deepest sense. It shows what feels to me almost like "forbidden" knowledge. There is no magical thinking in it; it is not trying to preach "Doing bad things is bad, full stop". Instead, the author shows realistic consequences and the full messiness of being in the world. It shows exactly how naivety can result in exploitation (the Fox and the Cat stealing from him after promising him easy riches), laziness in humiliation (skipping school and ending up forced to perform for strangers; he loses his agency and is released only by Mangiafuoco's arbitrary mercy), vanity in manipulation (he is steered by praise, attention, and promises of fame), dishonesty in isolation (his lies literally disfiguring him in front of others, making him ridiculous and impossible to hide), and hedonism in literal dehumanization (Pleasure Island turning boys into donkeys). It is quite rare for a children's book to be so honest about all the vile things in the world, and to show so directly that these things exist and that their consequences are not clean or neat either. It also shows how we learn as humans. We do not start out good or bad and stay that way; we are not born "finished". We start as little monsters, full of impulses and feelings we cannot control or do not yet know how to interpret. Yet we learn by acting on them and seeing where they lead us. We are messy creatures, and Pinocchio makes it visible. I believe reading it made me a more robust person with a more sophisticated view of the world.

culebron21 5mo ago

Interesting read, wouldn't have thought this of Pinocchio. Sadly, when I was learning Italian, I was reading more sophisticated things like Il Fu Mattia Pascal, with quite superficial understanding.

klez 5mo ago

If you want a film version that is more faithful to the original book, I suggest you watch the 2019 Garrone movie [0]. There's Benigni in It, but this time he plays Geppetto and he's not as insufferable as he can be. And the rest of the cast is very good too (many beloved comedians including the late Gigi Proietti). I have no idea if this stayed only in Italy or if it has been translated to other languages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio_(2019_film)

rob74 5mo ago

> The Italian is plain enough that an early learner with a textbook behind them can finish a chapter in a sitting. Hm, that gave me an idea... sounds like a fun way to learn Italian if you already have some basic knowledge?

zem 5mo ago

the bit about the simple language is interesting, since one of my strongest memories of reading the english translation of the book as a kid is that I learnt two new words from it, "alabaster" and "temple" (as in the side of the head).

razorbeamz 5mo ago

LLM written article.

blks 5mo ago

Russian/Soviet version of Pinocchio called “Buratino” is much nicer. Pinocchio is very individualistic and moralising, everything is a moral lesson or a bible reference. Buratino is very light and kind, main hero learns valuable lessons and defeats main bad guy with his friends, frees them from slavery and they end up getting their own theatre.

larodi 5mo ago

Like many other children’s books whxih stood the test of time, those we assume are written for children are more a cautionary tales for adults that children also tend to like as they (still) are lacking understanding of notions such as humility, compassion and all the abstract stuff we now know forms after age 10-12. The good Tom and Jerry episodes are completely devoid of tact and care, yet marvellous as entertainment .

yowo 5mo ago

> This is, again, a children's book. Children are capable of understanding cruelty, pain, death, suffering, in young age, overprotectiveness is why we have many >20 y/o people who can't speak for themselves and are overly shy.

gchamonlive 5mo ago
> overprotectiveness is why we have many >20 y/o people who can't speak for themselves and are overly shy. Is this even true or is it just your personal impression?
- anbotero 5mo ago
  I'd like numbers/evidence on it too, but for my own generation, I compared my cousins for years precisely about overprotectiveness, and those who were only protected against extreme imminent danger have succeeded in life way further (for their starting conditions, socially and economically) than those who had my aunts all over them not letting them fall and have scrapes. Anecdotally, again, the parents of those who did NOT fall on dirt were much more wealthy, so these cousins of course inherited (so to speak, their parents aren't dead) the wealth and status, but gosh, they do everything they are told to do, what to study, etc. While those who did fall frequently when babies these days have generated about half of the wealth the others inherited and they are vocal, really nice professionals and of course awesome people to spend time with. Girls were more protected than boys, regardless of everything else.
  - gchamonlive 5mo ago
    I'm not disputing that, my gripe is with the part ">20 y/o people can't speak for themselves and are overly shy". Can we really put an entire generation under this flag? Idk... I've met some 20 somethings and they seemed pretty functional to me.
    - phainopepla2 5mo ago
      You conveniently left out the the "we have many" part of that sentence you quoted. No one is suggesting it's the entire generation, or that there aren't plenty of 20-somethings who socially very functional. But there is evidence out there that Gen Z has higher levels of shyness and social anxiety than previous generations. I personally believe overprotectiveness is one causative factor among others, although I'm not sure whether the evidence is there.

skc 5mo ago

I was way too young when I read this book. Absolutely devoured it and had nightmares for a long time.

icemelt8 5mo ago

AI slop

coffeecantcode 5mo ago

Jacob Geller has a fantastic video essay (and written essay with annotations) on this topic, I suggest checking it out.

virtualritz 5mo ago

On that note, there is a recent live action Pinocchio film [1] that is very faithful to the book and absolutely magical; with Roberto Benigni playing Geppetto no less. It has some highly entertaining scathing reviews on Amazon of not being family-safe and faithful to "the original" from people who think Pinocchio was invented by Disney and use the animated movie as a reference for their critiques. As hilarious as it is sad. Remembering my dad reading us Pinocchio as a kids and visiting Tuscany around that time, too, with my family, this movie is as close to what I can remember imagining it, as it gets. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rIcXgMx7hU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rIcXgMx7hU

spacechild1 5mo ago
Wow, thanks for the tip!

binyu 5mo ago

Pinocchio had definitely some sociopathic traits as a character. The Pinocchio movie by Walt Disney from 1940 is a masterpiece. Highly recommended.

sedatk 5mo ago

> swallowed by un Pesce-cane — a dogfish, a kind of shark Dogfish in Turkish, “köpekbalığı”, also literally means shark.

NoSalt 5mo ago

As I have aged out of childhood into and through adulthood, I have discovered that MANY of my beloved childhood stories are ... "weirder" than I remember.

wslh 5mo ago

Tim Burton's Pinocchio was cancelled, but reading this, I can imagine this could have been his director's cut.

ardline 5mo ago

Solid work. The devil's in the operational complexity, but this looks manageable.