Journale Lucy Fricke’s Töchter: A Translation Road Trip

WHEN WE'RE TUSSIS

By María Tellechea, translated by Sinéad Crowe


Having arrived in Genoa after a stressful car journey and a day full of emotional goodbyes, Martha and Betty decide to stroll around the notoriously seedy port district. Eventually they sit down outside a bar on a little square, disappointed that no one has even attempted to pickpocket them. Betty orders two Aperol Spritzes, assuring the reader that, though their drink order may suggest otherwise, she and Martha are not Tussis; they intend to become Tussis when they’re old ladies, she informs us.

Two chairs with the Aperol Spritz logo on the streets of Buenos Aires

The term Tussi is tricky to translate, partly because it’s slang and therefore reflects the speaker’s language variety and subjectivity, and partly because it is used ironically here. (You can find a discussion of the various possible English translations of the word in Sinéad’s article). I therefore needed to find a word that was as general as possible and conveyed several shades of meaning. The irony of this passage lies in the fact that the protagonists plan to transform into Tussis when it will no longer be possible for them to be Tussis – in other words, when they’re old. At the same time, the fact that they’re not Tussis has allowed them to escape the attention of pickpockets.


MINITA: Definitions and Origins

Ultimately, I decided to translate Tussi as minita. Both the German and Spanish terms have various definitions and synonyms, but each of these conveys just one aspect of the word.

Minita comes from the word mina, which may in turn be derived from the Portuguese word menina (girl). Alternatively, mina may come from minna, a word in Italian dialect that means either woman or prostitute. Another theory on the origins of mina is that it is related to the word mine (the hole in the ground from which people take precious metals), in the sense that a prostitute serves as a goldmine for her pimp. Whatever the etymology of the word, mina is common slang in Argentina (as well as in Bolivia and Uruguay), and it is generally used to mean “woman”, though it may have varying shades of meaning depending on the context. However, diminutive forms change a word’s connotations significantly in Spanish (and not just in Argentine Spanish). In this case, the -ita is pejorative and gives the word a completely different meaning, making it much more specific. A minita isn’t just any mina, but a mina with certain characteristics. So what are these characteristics?

On some Argentine Spanish forums, a minita is defined as a young woman (up to 25 years of age) who regularly goes to the gym, is obsessed with her appearance, wears designer clothes, is always done up to the nines, dyes her hair blonde 1, and is a superficial airhead. And these days, of course, a minita constantly posts selfies on Instagram.

Meanwhile on Twitter, feminists ask why being “a bit of a minita” means being “pretty thick”, which in turn is directly associated with “being a woman”. In reproducing a gender stereotype, they argue, women become their own oppressors.

Feminists frequently ask what the male equivalent of minita is. The most original answer, I think, is rugbier, a word we use in Argentina to describe a man who is hyper-masculine, brutal, muscular and rather stupid – all characteristics that can be seen as the male equivalent of minita.

As we can see, when it comes to social stereotypes, you could spend hours having heated discussions about definitions …

If you want to find out more about this theme, make your way to this pit stop.

 

Drive on.

Fußnoten
1
PDF