If you read your children picture books that have been
translated from English to Spanish, you have probably had
moments when you were disappointed by a translation or felt that
the experience they were getting was somehow not as rich or
authentic as it would have been in English. In the case of
Quienquiera que seas, the opposite is true. The Spanish
translation is better than the original English, and the English
is great. I was going to include these rather academic
observations in the last post about this lovely book, but
decided this was a separate topic. You have been warned – the
rest of this post is about the miracle of translation and the
power of the subjunctive mood in Spanish. This picture book is a
perfect example of how a translation can convey the intent of a
text more effectively than the original. This may seem counter
intuitive or even ridiculous. After all, the text is the
original words. That is true, but a work is also ideas and the
way that ideas and language work together. In Quienquiera