Glossary entry

French term or phrase:

tout le capital qualitatif a été préservé

English translation:

all of its inherent quality has been preserved intact

Added to glossary by Carol Gullidge
May 31, 2008 10:22
16 yrs ago
French term

tout le capital qualitatif a été préservé

French to English Other Wine / Oenology / Viticulture wine growing
Le potentiel de récolte est correct et nécessite des vendanges en vert au début de l’été. Précipitations abondantes en septembre. Le grand savoir-faire et le terroir ont permis de corriger ces petits accidents climatologiques et ___***tout le capital qualitatif a été préservé.***

________

I don't feel comfortable with "qualitative capital" applied to a grape harvest - but perhaps wrongly! In my mind, this is a financial thing.

Does anybody know if this is in fact the correct term in this context, or if there is a more suitable one?

Many thanks!

Discussion

Carol Gullidge (asker) Jun 2, 2008:

Many thanks everybody - this was a great help!

Proposed translations

+2
2 hrs
Selected

all of its inherent quality has been preserved intact

I think this is one of those instances where you have to alter the form a little ('qualitatif' being translated as a noun and 'capital' as an adjective) to get it to work in English.

There are a lot of google hits for 'inherent quality' in the context of wine.
Note from asker:
thanks Andy! Grammatical transposition may well be the way to go here - at least it sounds more natural in English than my first ideas!
Peer comment(s):

agree Emma Paulay
4 hrs
agree Speakering (X) : sound good to me!
16 hrs
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Perfect - thanks Andy! This is what I used..."
1 hr

all the quality (assets) (which we had acheived / worked for) were preserved

Like you, my gut reaction when reading this is that it is figurative;

"le capital" meaning "capital", "assets", "reserve" in a figurative sense
"qualitatif" meaning quality not quantity obviously

I think that, in this figurative use, there is an implied sense of this capital having been the fruit of hard work which is why I suggest adding "which we had achieved" or "which we had worked for" and maybe drop assets altogether.

all the qualitative assets we had acheived
all the quality we had worked for was preserved

This is gut feeling (hence really low confidence) and I'm not yet happy with my formulation! I'll carry on thinking.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 hr (2008-05-31 11:48:59 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

was preserved lol

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2 hrs (2008-05-31 12:33:35 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

The most neutral formulations I can think of are:
"all of our qualitative resources were preserved"
"all of our qualitative achievements were preserved"

but, for its natural ring, I still prefer:
"all the quality we had achieved was preserved"

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2 hrs (2008-05-31 13:01:39 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

One last go before I turn to the bottle! I'm removing the "achievement" bit because it was verging on over-interpretation.

"all the quality of our resources was preserved"
"the full quality of our resources was preserved"
Note from asker:
thanks again yx for your excellent suggestions! I'm still cogitating - a nice glass of wine would be the ideal inspiration - all this is making me quite thirsty!
Something went wrong...
Term search
  • All of ProZ.com
  • Term search
  • Jobs
  • Forums
  • Multiple search