Pedro Fayolle wrote:
"Te quiero" in Spanish should not translate
as "I love you". "Te amo"
is the actual phrase.
Te quiero has a simiar meaning, but is just not as strong. Similar to
"dai suki" (not taken in literal sense, as that would be [en]"I like
you" = [es]"me gustas") vs. "aishiteru" in Japanese, I guess. I
don't
think there's any real equivalent in English.
A more literal translation of "Te quiero" might be "I desire
you", and
that carries a lot of other implications that may not be there in the
broader meanings of "love". We also need to take note of the inversion
in "me gustas". In the extremes of literality that would be "You taste
me", but more practically "You are pleasant to my tastes." For French
that becomes "Tu me plait," or "You please me." The inversion based
on
who is the subject of the verb suggests that the concept is more
aggressively self-centred in Germanic languages. :-)
Some people still believe in machine translations. :-D
Ec