How this book was translated
La mossa del tapiro came out in 2014, in Italian, self-published. We never thought it would become a publishing phenomenon, but we always believed in the beauty of the text, and we always hoped to tell this fable to as many people as possible. We made nothing from it; in fact we lost money. But it is a book we love, and it has given us a satisfaction no number could ever measure.
The translations were made with artificial intelligence, always checked against the Italian original: a first draft with Claude (Anthropic), a critical review with Kimi (Moonshot AI), and a final revision with Claude again. No native-speaking translator has reviewed them. If you find a mistake, write to us, though we can’t see why you would.
We know AI divides people, and we won’t pretend not to know it. We are against using it to churn out content without care, and not far from being against using it at all. Above all, we are against the movement pushing it, Anthropic included: a corporatism with a great deal of fascism in it, and an impact on the planet that may prove fatal to all of us.
Still, we used the tool, and it’s only right to say so. Here the alternative was not a professional translator: it was no translation at all. A book self-published by people who do something else entirely for a living would never have found the room, the time or the money for eight (or more) translations.
This is not a purely commercial venture. In digital form the book is free and will stay free. The print editions will be sold to cover costs, and we already know they won’t. If they did, it would be a very welcome surprise: it would mean we had helped make the world a better place.
We did it out of love for this text and for whoever reads it.