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...