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I don't understand what the -化 suffix in the following sentence means for a word like カリスマ, or why fearing it can lead to early retirement. Can anyone shine some light?

52歳の若さではあったが、カリスマ化を恐れて早々に身を引き、...

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"Charisma" has some connotations of influencing/leading lots of people, so it might mean "I was 52 years young, but I was still concerned about going on the road to charismatification (and the responsibilities it would entail) and promptly retired..." (If "charismatification" isn't a word it should be BTW :P) – user797 Nov 5 '11 at 10:47

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Let's examine 化 and some compound words it forms:

  • 化(suffix) - action of making something

  • 悪化する - worsen, deteriorate. Lit: to make worse
    Corresponding noun (without する) : deterioration

  • 一体化する - unify, integrate. Lit: to make into one body
    Corresponding nouns: unification, integration

  • 一般化する - generalise. Lit: to make general/ordinary
    Corresponding nouns: generalisation, popularisation

Now for カリスマ化する, the literal meaning would roughly be "to make charismatic", and its corresponding noun would be as glacier puts it "charismatification". Not a real word but it's supposed to mean "the process of being made charismatic".

For the translation of the whole excerpt I think glacier has done a pretty good job in the question comment.

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Now this is the kind of flexibility that a hacker appreciates in a language! – Karl Knechtel Nov 5 '11 at 17:26

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