English for「不器用と見せかけて策略家でも萌えます。」?

[nekojita]

You need to look up not just English meanings, but example sentences (dictionaries or 株式会社アルク ) to see how the word is used. If the meaning/use doesn't seem to fit your sentence, you may have run into some sort of slang/metaphor/set phrase (e.g. 萌える here, "bloom" doesn't make a lot of sense), or you may have made an incorrect assumption/interpretation elsewhere.

Where did you see イメージ as "illustrate", btw? As a verb I primarily associated it with "mental image". You may need a better dictionary.

There are cases where an inanimate object can be the "agent", depending on what the verb is (sentences stolen off Google at random):
本が人をつくる。 (non-literal use of つくる)
年賀状「作成本」がTOP7を独占 (talking about sales rankings)
本書は、最新の学術的な成果を盛り込み、原始古代から現代までの歴史を詳述している (description of a book)

 

[MamaMiki]

You need to look up not just English meanings, but example sentences (dictionaries or 株式会社アルク ) to see how the word is used. If the meaning/use doesn't seem to fit your sentence, you may have run into some sort of slang/metaphor/set phrase (e.g. 萌える here, "bloom" doesn't make a lot of sense), or you may have made an incorrect assumption/interpretation elsewhere.

Where did you see イメージ as "illustrate", btw? As a verb I primarily associated it with "mental image". You may need a better dictionary.

There are cases where an inanimate object can be the "agent", depending on what the verb is (sentences stolen off Google at random):
本が人をつくる。 (non-literal use of つくる)
年賀状「作成本」がTOP7を独占 (talking about sales rankings)
本書は、最新の学術的な成果を盛り込み、原始古代から現代までの歴史を詳述している (description of a book)

I checked out that 株式会社アルク and, wow! It's amazing! I never knew such a thing existed. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

And yeah...I'm sort of in the process of graduating from studying to actually using the language. Perhaps some updated resources are in order. ^^;

Exactly. It is possible, but it's sometimes a little difficult to tell when Japanese doesn't require you to have 私は all the time. Also, I thought the sentence 本が人をつくる was interesting. Does it perhaps mean something along the lines of a book making people who they are, versus actually physically making them?

Once again, thank you for all your help. ^^

 

[nekojita]

Pretty close to the English use as in "clothes make the man"/"that experience made me who I am today", etc.

It could also be "books" plural here - it's the title of a magazine article and I don't have access to the article, just thought it was an interesting example.

This is about learning English but is relevant:
How to Use Context Clues to Improve Literacy for ESL

 

[MamaMiki]

Pretty close to the English use as in "clothes make the man"/"that experience made me who I am today", etc.

It could also be "books" plural here - it's the title of a magazine article and I don't have access to the article, just thought it was an interesting example.

This is about learning English but is relevant:
How to Use Context Clues to Improve Literacy for ESL

Yeah, that's the interpretation I had too. Thank you so much for the article! It helped a lot more than you might think!

Also, thank you for your time and suggestions! I really, really appreciate it.