You may have noticed that this is a bilingual blog: it´s published in Spanish, and also in English. I have the good fortune to speak both languages, and I´m also an amateur translator, so I get to enjoy double time with this blog: first while writing the weekly post, and then again while translating it 😊

But it´s true that every now and then I bump into a word or sentence that I find really hard to translate… Something that sounds great to me in one language, but then loses all its spark once translated. And it´s not just with the blog, it happens to me also in daily life, and I suspect I´m not the only one suffering from it. At home, I spend most of my time speaking Spanish, but there are certain words and expressions that I always say in English, because in Spanish they just don´t fit. And at work it´s the opposite situation: I speak with my colleagues in English, and sometimes I struggle to explain an expression or saying that would be super simple if I said it in Spanish.

One of those sentences that sound amazing in English, which is why I always say it that way, is something I learned years ago in a yoga class for pregnancy. I love the way it sounds and also what it conveys; I repeat it often to my three “babies”, and I say it to myself as well, because I believe it´s something we can all benefit from hearing:

You are lovely, you are lovable, you are loved.

Beautiful, right? And in English it sounds so musical, so special, almost like a poem. Now, we translate it into Spanish, and it turns out something like “eres adorable, te mereces amor, eres amado/a”. The message is still very nice, but which version sounds better to you?