BdiL Jan 10, 2011:

It's the effing draft/national service/army life! If you're trying to understand the interjection/ejaculation soldiers exchange at any given point of their chatting, this is it. Never mind if it's lombard or else, though I believe its origin (in the song) is from Trentino (if you picked it from "Motorizzati a piè". I am half trentino and the linguistic analysis of the text here http://www.unuciavezzano.it/canti_montagna.htm led me to that conclusion, further supported by this http://www.corobrenta.it/armonie_di_un_popolo.html where you see at the bottom "provenienza Trentino"). In many Northern Italian dialects, including Lombard, Ligurian, Trentino, "l'è" means "it is"; in Piedmontese, we have the peculiarity of the verbal pronoun "a" ("i"/ "i-t"), a celtic loan, and we say "a l'é", shortened to "l'é".
By saying "l'è la naja" soldiers are really blaming on military life whatever goes bad/askew/wrong for them during their service. It's like saying in a different context "it's the recession", "it's 9/11", "it's the rogue governments". What soldiers believe is that once army life is over, they'll be OK! Yes, and talking about context, you know yours... so, guess right! Maurizio

R.C. (X) Jan 10, 2011:

I agree with Ilaria Feltre. the L before è does not mean anything, it it added in Northern Italy to give flavour to the sound. l'è = is then, and perhaps draft (US) or nasho as D.Turnbull suggested could do ..... nobody would ever use naja in official writings, though.....

Maria Vita Licata Jan 9, 2011:

You should maybe change the word, and replace "naja" with a noun used to describe a soldier, such as "jarhead".

zerlina Jan 9, 2011:

well it seems quiete obvious that you need some slangterm for translating naja, unfortunately I'm not the one who can help you!:-).

Russell Jones (asker) Jan 9, 2011:

Hi Ilaria. In the text I am dealing with, "l'è la naja" (without the finita) is thrown into conversations regularly, it seems to me almost as a jokey aside. Just speculating, could it be something like "that's national service for you" though that still sounds a bit formal.

Ilaria A. Feltre Jan 9, 2011:

Hello Russell,

"L'è" means simply "it is", "finida l'è la naja" = "è finita la naia"/"è finita la leva".

I'm not sure I understand the question, are you looking for an equivalent of "naja"? Would "(military) service" do?