大气

20:25 Apr 19, 2016 

Thank you all for the discussions. I ended up going with a mix of "stately" and "grand", but it was helpful to have a better idea of the various different connotations.

22:42 Apr 15, 2016 

I guess it depends on the implications of 大气 in the source. If the focus is on size then "generous" is best, if focus is appearance then "glamorous", if the focus is the "feel" then "majestic", focus is social status then "stately". It depends on what words 大气 is being contrasted against.

18:23 Apr 15, 2016 

I appreciate your attention to detail, and it sounds like you will exercise careful judgment in your translation.

As a general rule, I try not to "split hairs" when it comes to translating terms in marketing survey responses that fall within a particular word group.

For instance, if you're translating (or creating codes for) a marketing survey with the following list of terms, clinical precision probably isn't necessary:

脱俗, 精致, 淡雅, 典雅, 大气, 高贵, 高雅, 优雅 , etc.

Not all of these terms mean the same thing, of course, and they aren't used in exactly the same way, but there is often considerable overlap, and I think your translation can to some extent reflect this overlap. I wouldn't dare suggest using only one term to cover all of those Chinese descriptions, but you could probably cover all 8 of them with, say, 4 or 5 different translations.

Just a thought.

17:02 Apr 15, 2016 

Note that since these are interview responses, I do need to be as accurate as reasonably possible. Elegance is actually not important as the content is not intended to be published.