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A critic's French superlative: who defines the comparison set?
Read French critical superlatives with their stated comparison sets, preserving a period, genre or selection rather than extending a verdict to all art.
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In short
The comparison set is part of the claim. Le plus abouti des trois films présentés compares those three films, not every film ever made. Keep the set, criterion and speaker when paraphrasing a superlative.
Yellow the idea to rememberBlue French to learn
Trois verdicts à lire
Selection
AÀ mes yeux, c’est le plus abouti des trois films présentés ce soir.
Period
BLa critique y voit l’un des accrochages les plus audacieux de cette saison.
Genre
CParmi les portraits de cette sélection, celui-ci est le plus retenu dans son usage de la couleur.
Separate rank, set and criterion
A ranks one film among three by overall accomplishment. B does not even claim a unique first place: l’un des plus places the display among a high-ranking group in one season. C concerns restraint in colour among the portraits selected. Translating all three as “the best artwork” loses their different comparisons.
La critique juge l’accrochage particulièrement audacieux parmi ceux de la saison, sans le comparer à toute l’histoire de l’art.
The critic judges the display especially bold among the season’s displays, without comparing it to all art history.
A strong verdict can be tightly bounded. When you relay it, do not remove the phrase that makes its scope assessable. If no comparison set is explicit, note the context that supplies it or ask what the critic is actually comparing.