Need Help from Native Italian with Term "Gine."
 

I'm editing a book that was translated from Italian, and it refers more than once to people called the "gine." I can gather from the context that this is a reference to a group of women, possibly nuns, who are kind of what we might refer to as "goofballs," women who are kind of "spaced out" or "out of it." I'm trying to find an appropriate English equivalent to use. Are there any native Italian speakers here who could explain the "gine" to me in greater detail? Thanks in advance.

Hmm. When I worked in an office of mostly women and all (except me) Italian, we called each other le gine as a joke. I thought it originated with us, but will ask one of the old gang. It might possibly have something to do with "gineceo," on the assumption that any gathering exclusively of women is bound to get silly (and we did).


best regards,
Deirdré Straughan

straughan.com

Reply from one of my ex-gine:

"Gina" per me significa :
donna un po' imbranata, nel senso che fa cose normali e corrette ma eccedendo in zelo,
per es: mi presentano una persona e io stringo la mano dicendo "piacere di conoscerla" quando basterebbe un "ciao" perche' siamo tra amici,
oppure
compilo tutto un form riempiendo anche i campi non obbligatori e spendendoci delle ore quando basterebbero 5 minuti compilando solo i campi forndamentali.

"Gina" e' un po' l'opposto di "cool" , e' una persona che si gestisce bene ma non e' furba abbastanza

E' un termine che ho sentito usare molto poco ma anche al di fuori del nostro gruppetto."

Translated:

"Gina" to me means a woman who's a bit clumsy, in the sense that she does things that are correct and normal but a bit overzealous. For example, I'm introduced to someone, and I shake their hand and say "Pleased to meet you" when "Ciao" would do, because we're among friends. Or else I fill out a form completely, filling in even the optional fields, spending hours on it when I could have spent 5 minutes just doing the essential fields.

"Gina" is a bit the opposite of "cool," she's a person who manages herself well but isn't clever enough. [furba is another Italian word that's hard to translate...]

It's a term I've heard used very little, but also outside our little group."

Me again: So maybe you could find a term implying a female geek/nerd? Good luck with it!

Interesting. My book of Italian slang contains the term "gino" for a boy, as someone who tries too hard to be cool, who wants to be part of the "in crowd" or "paninaro" but isn't up to the task; a nerd or geek, as it were.

Well then I suppose "gina" would refer to a girl, and "gine" is the plural for both. Since many Italians are actually named Gino or Gina, it seems hard to believe that it is a pejorative. Maybe it is more like the way Australians refer to "Sheilas."

Not a native, obviously, and don't know, but check your e-mail and a link to an IL thread where you might possibly get further responses if the thread stays active and if you indicate the regional/local setting.

Thanks, all.

cmt: The author of the book is Roman.

vedette: Can you explain what Aussies mean when they talk about Sheilas?

Excuse me???!

I may be wrong, but I think "Sheila" is just slang for any youngish woman, but I don't think it is pejorative. As in, "let's go to the beach and check out the Sheilas." I don't think this implies anything about the intelligence or moral qualities of the females. Maybe an actual Aussie can elaborate for us.

i'm not australian, but i've always understood 'sheila' to just be slang for 'woman'...

StCirq, Perhaps you could just subsitute the word " blond". It seems to fit.

Here's another comment about the slang use of "Gina": http://forums.about.com/ab-italian/messages?msg=4785.4

I guess that's supposed to be astoundingly clever and amusing, Bob. Ha. ha.

Perhaps the suggestion to use the word "Barbies" would have offended a somewhat smaller segment of the population.

But I give in... and offer a blonde joke...

Did you hear about the blonde who got a scarf for a gift, and wanted to return it to the store?

She said it was too tight.

;)

Best wishes,

Rex

OK Rex, LOL.

Did you hear about the blonde who opened up the refrigerator and stood there staying inside it for fifteen minutes. Her husband finally asked her why. She said "well the orange juice container says concentrate".

From the explanation given by Deirdre and her friend, I would say nerd -- or the interesting coinage nerdette -- would be close.

I don't think "gine" are the female equivalent of geeks or nerds, but rather women with certain "female" characteristics, as defined by many/most males.

According to them, [many/most] women are "ditsy." So what about the word that is a back-formation from ditsy, i.e. "ditz"?

Thanks, all, for the suggestions, but this is a serious book by an Italian journalist whose book has received tremendous accolades in Italy, and I hope will reach a wide readership here in the USA, and I have to find an acceptable explanation for this term. Using "nerd" or "blond" just won't do. I have to actually add a footnote to the text to explain what the author means - and she can't explain it to me well enough in English, or Italian for that matter, for me to grasp the full meaning.

I think DeirdreStraughan's explanation comes closest to what I was looking for, and I thank you, Deirdre.

I do appreciate the Fodorite humor, though;)

Eloise - I LIKE that! Ditsy may be just the term I'm looking for. I still have to figure out what the connection with nuns is, though. The implication in the text is that most "gine" are nuns.

This is a bit craze-making, but thank you all for your help.

St-Cirq, I'm glad you like the idea, but I see your problem.

If most "gine" ("gine" seen as a particular segment of the population) are or become nuns, I don't think ditsy or any derivation from it is the right word.

If it's simply a reference to a group of nuns (in what I assume to be a satiric or ironic vein), then the connection is a pretty basic one: nuns are, by definition, female.

Fot anyone curious, here are some Italian references to the word "gina" from slang word lists. (If I post the search results here, there will be emoticon faces in the urls, so it's best to viesw them on the other forum.)
http://forums.about.com/ab-italian/messages?msg=4785.8

Hello St. Cirq, I just phoned my son in law who was born and raised in Rome and has been here in the US since 1998.

He is not famaliar with the term "gine" except in the content that it is a nickname (or as he said an abbreviation) for the female name Gina or Ginetta.

He said that if you would post here a few sentences that include the word "gine" that he could probably tell you what the meaning is.

So if you wish to do that maybe you can get a good answer to your questions. Take good care.

Eloise: It seems that the connotations o this word vary. If you look at my recent post and follow the link to my post on another forum listing three search results, you'll see that the meaning shown on some of these Italian slang word lists is a lot coarser and more negative than just ditz, or as I was thinking, dimwit. Interesting....

cmt: I did, in fact, follow up the links and was surprised at just how coarse some of the definitions were.

By all rights, I should not even have posted on the thread, since I am definitely not a "native Italian." If I did, it's because language and the use of language is a large part of how I earn my living.

Darn, darn, darn: "language and the use of language ARE a large part..."

Native or not, your suggestions made sense. But it sounds like this is a word that may be used as mild self-ridicule by some women, but as a much coarser insult by other people. I'm not native speaker either, and I don't use languages in my work, but I like languages and often like language threads better than travel threads. I posted the questions on the IL forum because there ARE several very helpful and learned native speakers there.

Oh, but using ENGLISH is a large part of my work (just not using foreign languages).

Eloise: You were not necessarily incorrect, though perhaps on the margins of correctness.

Sometimes a clutch of nouns, when they make a single whole, can take the singular verb.

My source: My late father in law, a University Chair of English literature who, in earlier and less exalted days, wrote a book on style and composition for Canadian schools.

Tedgale: Judging by my experience with what I must, whether I like to admit it or not, refer to as "the younger generation," I would think that you meant "earlier and MORE exalted days." I am, as the character in "Casablanca" said, "Shocked! Shocked!" at the way younger people often mangle the English language. Not to speak of the ones who cannot differentiate between an infinitive and a past participle in French...

St. Cirq: if you're saying you HAVE an Italian explanation of the term, why not post that? I'm not fluent, but I had no problem with DS's Italian post. That would give a better idea of what the editor's sense of the term really means.

I do think that the term "gino" and "gine" are equivalent- and that there is no coarse meaning intended at all-perhaps just slightly pejorative. One of the English explanations for the term "gino" was "simpleton" which might work as well

This was intriguing me so I just had a look on the ProZ translation community website. It appears that "gine" is slang for Italian Red Cross Nurses.
See: http://www.proz.com/kudoz/901915?keyword=gine

Hanl: I'm not positive about this, but I think "gine," used as a slang word for a nurse, is a masculine singular word. I think the other slang usgaes we were discussing were for the feminine word "gina" (plural "gine"). Maybe "il gine" and "la gina" are related in meaning, but not necessarily. (Now I am confused and don't know which word was being used in the book!)

Goodness! I never expected so many responses to this. Thank you all!

Spygirl, in the original Italian book, the author simply used the term "gine" with little or no explanation (though now that I'm hearing from native Italians who seem to be confused about it, I wonder if that was a wise decision). In the English the translator and author added some text to try to explain it, but I still feel it's confusing. Here's an excerpt that relates to the gine:

<<“You’re surely not going to share with the gine (goofies) ?” Francesca asks me a little sarcastically when she sees me carrying my rucksack into the Red Cross tent. I decide to go for it and accept the challenge: to live for a month with the ladies, whom we nickname gine (goofies) for their meager aptitude for anything practical, is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Only a couple of them lead what I would consider a normal life back home. Most of them, in fact, are nuns.
That the Red Cross nurses don’t have a head for practicalities was obvious right from our departure: they got on the wrong coach and got lost and then again in the airport. With patients, though, they really know what they are doing, and so soon they are heading off enthusiastically to the patients’ tent.>>

Obviously I can't leave "goofies" in, and I'm trying to find a succinct definition that I can just put in a footnote.

The author seems to agree with the explanation that DeirdreStraughan gave yesterday, so I'm leaning toward that or some variation of it.

Interestingly, the author told me today that it is a Lombardian term.

Again, thanks for all your suggestions!

In the context of the paragraph you give, "nerd" or some female equivalent sounds better to me. Personally, I'd rework the entire paragraph, maybe like this:

“You’re not really going to stay with the gine?” Francesca asks me, a little sarcastically, when she sees me carrying my backpack into the Red Cross tent. I’ve decided to accept a challenge and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to live for a month with the gine (a term of affectionate derision applied to women who haven’t much aptitude for the stuff of daily life). Only a couple of the gine lead what I would consider a normal life, back home; in fact, most of them are nuns. That these Red Cross nurses didn’t have much practical sense was obvious right from our departure: they got on the wrong bus and got lost, and then got lost again in the airport. With patients, however, they know what they’re doing, and soon they head off enthusiastically to the patients’ tent.”

... I might come up with something a little more elegant, but it's been a long day...

best regards,
Deirdré Straughan

straughan.com

Deirdre, I like your version much better.

Nice work, Deirdre. I am no expert but would say you are a born editor.

Thanks. As you probably figured out, I am also a bit of a showoff. <grin>

Thanks, Deirdre. Just so you know, that exerpt was the unedited version. I wanted folks to see the original in case something I had changed might affect the context in which "gine" appeared.

Need a job? ;)

<<Just so you know, that excerpt was the unedited version.>>

We assumed that. (Or at least I did.)

"Thanks, Deirdre. Just so you know, that exerpt was the unedited version."

I figured. Though to be honest I'm not that thrilled with the translation. But I guess I don't normally read unedited translations!

"Need a job?" Thanks, got one. But I might be able to squeeze in some freelancing here and there...