"Fille de pub” et de réfugiés catalans

09:28 Jun 6, 2013 

Brilliant!

And hey presto! you've also quoted another smashing example of zeugma: "pen and paper collar and stud"

09:27 Jun 6, 2013 

I can't resist it: 'Twas in my youth I ran away
To accountancy one day
With pen and paper collar and stud
Accountancy was in my blood
I'll scribble away and balance the books and sing an accountancy shanty! - Python.
Maybe advertising is like that too?

12:32 Jun 5, 2013 

trained in it and has worked her way up through the profession to the point that she is now the co-founder of a leading advertising agency. Thanks Tony, for clarifying the whole "in her blood" issue, I'd only ever heard it used in the sense of following in another family member's footsteps. Still hesitating over this one...

11:34 Jun 5, 2013 

she is part of the advertising generation, a bit like the "beat generation".
Did she work in advertising before ?

11:33 Jun 5, 2013 

'in her blood' doesn't necessarily mean 'born with', it has long lost its purely literal meaning; it just means 'steeped in', 'imbued with', etc.

However, I think 'innate' is just as bad, suggesting as it also does that it is 'inherent' or 'inborn'

I think you might need to research your character more in order to find out just in what way she is this 'fille de pub'? If she wasn't born into a family of advertising professionals, then was she trained in it — or did she watch a lot of TV during long months in a sick bed? All this sort of background ifnormation could probably help you come up with the most apposite expression here.

I must admit, I did wonder if it was 'pub' in the EN sense, used a lot in FR — a bar-room child! But then I discounted that as purely entertaining conjecture ;-)

11:30 Jun 5, 2013 

"inborn" is not quite right; more of a groupie? a boffin? advertising boffin? fan of advertising? just some ideas ...

11:18 Jun 5, 2013 

"with an innate love of advertising" for the first part. If I rearrange the sentence and word it like this "Daughter of Catalan refugees, Spanish born but proud to have become French, a self-assured "feminist" with an innate love of advertising..." maybe that will do the trick. I don't feel like I can really use "born" or "inborn" twice in one sentence.

11:10 Jun 5, 2013 

Well, the second refugee part seems so obvious now, I don't know how I didn't see it before! I was clearly reading too much into it and making things too complicated. As for the "with advertising in her blood" though, wouldn't this imply that her family were also in the advertising business, which they weren't?

10:48 Jun 5, 2013 

I think this could be a reference to the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Catalonia had remained Republican up to its fall to the Francoist army in early 1939. Many refugees escaped to France from Catalonia (I think about 400,000/500,000 people), and many of them would have been Catalans. She is the daughter / child of Catalan refugees.

10:39 Jun 5, 2013 

is part of the advertising/media generation. She is also (literally) the daughter of Catalan refugees, probably people who fled Spain in the days of Franco and the Civil War and who settled in France. She is therefore first-generation French (if born on France) or maybe came with the said parents as a small child and later took French nationality