Translation Clarification for "優雅"

[busypie]

Japanese describe the cherry blossoms as 優雅: "beautiful but not showy."

It's from a trailer for a documentary called The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom:
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom Trailer on Vimeo

According to people I've asked, 優雅 means "elegance."

So is the director dramatizing the word or is it another reading? Thanks.

 

[Toritoribe]

優雅 has a nuance of elegant, graceful, dignified or refined, so "not showy" is a good translation, I think.

 

[busypie]

Thank you so much!

 

[Toritoribe]

I've just come up with an idea that the translator might be confused 優雅 with 優美. 優美 literally means "beautiful but not showy", whereas 優雅 doesn't always imply "beautiful".

 

[busypie]

Oohhh, thanks for the update. One of the Japanese people displaced by the tsunami wrote it down and the film had it translated as that, so I was thinking how much of the word was literal versus the director's take.

 

[Toritoribe]

I would caption it "elegant".

 

[busypie]

Okay, thanks for the clarification!