News stories about teens and young adults committing crimes in major Italian cities are flying in this morning.
In Genoa’s own newspaper of record, the XIX secolo, I learn that a member of the city council was assaulted on a train the other day for urging a ragazzina to wear her face mask. The ragazzina turns out to be 18 year old. Hardly a ragazzina.
The family of a 16-year-old who knifed a carabiniere in a Turin pharmacy claims that their son is un bravo ragazzo and that they are una famiglia perbene.
In other news, le babygang are brazenly wreaking havoc across the nation.
The Artful Translator has decided something must be done to put a stop to this unending flow of ridiculous epithets and unlikely English coinages.
Let’s thrash out some facts:
- A young woman who has the right to vote in EU and Italian elections can hardly be described as a ragazzina. She is an adult and the seriousness of any crime she may have committed must not be mitigated by the use of mollifying diminutives.
- Who came up with the ridiculous babygang?. A teen gang? A youth gang? Can Italian reporters please do away with this absurd and risible misnomer? How about using an Italian word instead?
- And as to the bravo ragazzo, well, his respectable and decent family must either lack a reputable Italian dictionary on their bookshelf or they must think that dropping some popular clichés might successfully whitewash their poor parental skills.