ne manquait pas de caractère

14:07 Mar 30 

Exactly what I was thinking - I'll give up banging my head against that brick wall. ;-) Enjoy the sunshine, I'll do the same!

14:05 Mar 30 

Thanks for your support but it seems like we may as well be talking to a wall.
The sun is shining so I am going out to enjoy it!

13:51 Mar 30 

"The beauty" ... is absolutely not sufficient to convey the idea of personification, in the way the French does. The French is far more elegant and emphatic.

13:48 Mar 30 

OMG: the BEAUTY is the personification, and eye-catching applies to dresses and people. Do you know what word play is???

13:44 Mar 30 

"The beauty in question was certainly eye-catching" is not a personification at all. A dress can be eye-catching without resorting to personification, as you know well. It's quite silly to try to argue something which is clearly not true.

13:41 Mar 30 

"The beauty in question was certainly eye-catching" is very much a personification. But hey, let's just agree to disagree! Have a good weekend.

13:38 Mar 30 

Your argument is unsound. Just because you happen to think "the beauty" is a nice choice for demoiselle, this doesn't invalidate what I'm saying: that it is sad to fail to sustain the personification all the way into "ne manquait pas de caractère" as the French does.

13:25 Mar 30 

Oh dear indeed. I'm afraid I don't think you've grasped the nuances of using "The beauty" as Yvonne suggested: it's a lovely way to get round the clunkiness of using something literal for "demoiselle", a very nice play on words ("beauty" as a woman and as a lovely object), fits the tone and context, and does absolutely "honour the poetic imagination."

13:16 Mar 30 

You haven't grasped the problem with your suggestion: it does not continue this idea of personification in the way "ne manquait pas de caractère" does in the French. The French quite deliberately and pointedly says "we're playing along with this idea that the dress is seen as a person", but your suggestion simply doesn't do that. So it's a bit sad because it fails to honour the poetic imagination.

11:31 Mar 30 

Thanks for rereading the text and for having the grace to admit you were wrong. Pity your "agree" only lasted a few minutes though and that you then accuse me of omitting "a facet".
There is clear evidence, first in my Dbox posts, and then in my answer, that, unlike some others, I was aware of the personification from the start. I asked for more text BEFORE any answers were posted, didn't get it, so looked it up myself to read. (Very simple to do: just post the quoted text in Google and hey presto, if it's in Google Books, it will pop up. I thought everyone knew how to do that!) I posted an answer only AFTER reading the text and confirming the personification.
The personification is made very clear, multiple times, in the text but I simply didn't like "The young lady/She..." or "The dress in question..." in this particular sentence in English so looked for another solution and think I came up with a great one, even if I do say so myself!

17:18 Mar 29 

I recommend anyone to read carefully the whole two pages at the link in Anastasia's answer. It is indeed about a dress. However, this term "demoiselle" can never mean "dress" in French, so the tailor is personifying the dress. And in this little phrase the narrative voice, through the eyes of Ivoire, takes up this personification. If we simply say "it was charming" or "it was eye-catching", we fail to reflect that personification-and-repartee, which both the dialogue and the narrative voice sustain emphatically throughout this whole passage.

For that reason, although initially my suggestion was based on a misreading, I think it does in fact work. We have to lend personality to the dress in our chosen expression, I think. We shouldn't be too heavy-handed, but equally we shouldn't just say "charming". A thing can be charming: it has to be clearer than that to do justice to the narrative imagination, IMHO.

21:25 Mar 28 

Ive read the context! If you go to Anastasia‘a answer, she’s kindly posted the link to the book. It’s very easy to open and quickly read the bit in question - and quite fun! 😆

21:18 Mar 28 

Perhaps the asker could explain the context - 'refers to a dress as a lady' doesn't tell us much.

20:54 Mar 28 

To be honest I don't think it is (having read a few pages), it's more about magical realism and the clothes coming to life, it's in the fantasy genre. But I could be wrong - a couple of pages doesn't tell everything about the book!

20:41 Mar 28 

they're saying if this dress were a woman, this is what she'd be like.

15:55 Mar 28 

Yes, great solution! :-)

15:54 Mar 28 

The beauty in question....? covers all possibilities

15:48 Mar 28 

Couldn't resist and I read it too - so yes, Ivoire is young (and some sort of grey character I think!) while the demoiselle is definitely the dress - referred to demoiselle several times. I'll suggest another translation possibility I think fits with the text.

15:13 Mar 28 

I read a bit of the story. No time now to read more and still not sure if Ivoire is a person or not but she is described as a young girl, though the story seems a bit like fantasyland.

14:32 Mar 28 

It 'made a real statement' (if it's really a dress the lady is wryly commenting on)

13:43 Mar 28 

You'd say from this sentence that Ivoire is an older woman (grey hair + eyebrow) commenting on a sassy younger woman...

13:22 Mar 28 

Is "Ivoire" a girl or the dress being personified?

13:19 Mar 28 

Agree with Yvonne - are you sure the "demoiselle" is a dress? Could you paste the whole paragraph maybe? :-)

13:14 Mar 28 

if speaking of the dress I'm not sure that "The lady in question" is OK? "not lacking in character." seems OK
Could you give a few more sentences?