This song is an incredibly cute love song. It’s by a Spanish band from the Canary Islands called Efecto Pasillo. Check it out here.
First Verse
No importa que llueva si estoy cerca de ti
We open this song with the title. This song is a really cute love song.
This whole line means “It doesn’t matter if it rains if I’m close to you.”
No importa uses the word importar, which translates to English as “to matter.” It works like the verbs gustar and interesar, which are usually conjugated in the third-person to agree with the thing that is liked, is interesting, or matters.
Llueva is the third-person subjunctive form of the word llover, which is only ever conjugated in the third-person. As far as I know, no person possesses the ability to rain, so you would never have to say “I rained.” In this case, llueva uses the subjunctive to express uncertainty. If you used the present tense here, it would translate as “it doesn’t matter that it is raining.”
Si estoy cerca de ti means “if I’m close to you.” Si means if. We use estoy, which is the first-person form of estar, to indicate location. Cerca means close, and it’s followed by de to indicate being close to something. Its opposite, lejos, is also followed by de.
Eh, me paso el día molestándote
Don’t get fooled by this line. Molestándote does not mean you think it might mean. This line means “I spend all day bothering you,” not the other thing.
Me paso el día is “I spend the day.” Me is optional here. It’s likely used to make the line have enough syllables.
Molestándote is the gerund form of the word molestar, which does not mean what you think it means. It means “to bother.” When you add a pronoun to a gerund, you can either add it before the verb prior to the gerund, in this case paso, or at the end of the gerund, which is how it’s done here. When you add it to the gerund, you need an accent on the second to last vowel.
Las travesuras que te quiero hacer
This song uses a lot of youthful imagery, and this line is no exception. A travesura is a prank. So this line means “the pranks that I want to do to you.” This gives us the idea that they’re like schoolchildren who are mean to each other when they like each other.
Me encanta verte, enfadarte y reírme
This line means “I love to see you, annoy you, and laugh.” Again, this has imagery of childish love.
Verte is “to see you,” Enfadarte is “to annoy you” or “to make you mad,” and reírme is “to laugh.”
Reír is most often used as a reflexive verb, which is why it’s reírme. You can technically use it by yourself, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say it.
The other important note is that this sentence uses encanta and not encantan. This is a little hard to wrap your head around, but when multiple infinitive verbs (in this case, ver, enfadar, and reír) are listed together and treated as a single activity or idea, they are considered to be one singular concept. Since they’re singular, this line uses the third-person singular conjugation of encantar.
Y aunque lo intentes, no puedes hoy
Dejarme ni un segundo de querer
This line translates as “even though you try it, today you can’t stop loving me for even a second.” Aunque means “even though” or “even if.” It is always followed by the subjunctive, which is why it’s intentes and not intentas. Intentar, by the way, means to try to do something.
Dejar de is to stop doing something. Me dejas de querer, which is what this line uses, is “you stop loving me.”
Ni un segundo means “not even a second.” We’ve seen this in other songs that I’ve broken down, but ni is a shortened for ni siquiera, and this is the difference between saying “you can’t stop loving me for a second” and “you can’t stop loving me for even a second.” It adds emphasis.
Y te mortifica que lo sepa bien
Te mortifica means “it mortifies you.” This triggers the subjunctive because it is used to talk about emotions, so in the second part of the line, we get lo sepa, which is the subjunctive form of “I know it.” Sepa is the subjunctive form of saber. We can infer that the subject here is yo and not él or ella.
Altogether, this line means “It mortifies you that I know it well.” This refers to the fact that he knows that this woman (we learn in a later line that this person has feminine pronouns) cannot stop loving him, no matter how much he makes fun of her.
Pero no ves que todo lo que te doy
Es todo lo que sé, es todo lo que soy
This lines translates as “But you don’t see all that I give you. It’s all that I know. It’s all that I am.”
All of the verbs in these lines are in the singular (you, me, he, she, etc.) present tense forms.
Ves is the second-person form of ver, which means to see. Doy is the first-person form of dar. Sé is the first-person form of saber. And soy is the first-person form of ser.
Lo que is a non-specific pronoun that means “what,” such as the “what” in the sentence “I forgot what she told me.”
Y ahora mira niña, escúchame
This line means “And now look girl, listen to me.” It’s pretty simple. It uses the second-person command form for both mirar, which means to look or to see, and escuchar, which means to listen. Escuchar also adds a pronoun meaning “to me.”
First Chorus
The chorus actually opens up with the title of the song, which was covered in the first part of the verse, so I won’t repeat it here.
La vida se convierte en juego de niños
Cuando tú estás junto a mí
Se convierte is a conjugated form of convertirse, which means to become. It’s used as a reflexive verb when you want to say that something has become something else. Without the reflexive pronoun, it means someone converted something into something else.
Junto means nearby or together. Because junto is used with an object, it’s an adverb in this line, so it doesn’t change to the feminine form. Remember that in the last line of the verse, we establish that the listener is a woman. It can be an adjective, which means that two things are together, in which case it would change to agree with the noun. An example of this is the difference between las chicas están juntas instead of la chica está junto a la otra. The first uses junto as an adjective to describe the state of the girls. The second uses junto a as an adverb to describe the location of one girl in relation to the others.
Lastly, because we’re describing a habitual action, not a hypothetical action, cuando does not trigger the subjunctive.
Altogether, this line means “life turns into a children’s game whenever you’re near me.”
Si hay nieve o si truena, si estoy cerca de ti
This is an incomplete thought. It literally just means “if there’s snow or if it thunders. If you are close to me.” It just adds onto the list of things that don’t matter to him if he’s close to this woman.
Nieve is snow. Hay is the third-person singular present-tense form of haber, which means “there is.” He could have also used the word nevar, which means to snow, but it would have one fewer syllable, which probably doesn’t work as well for the song.
Truena is the third-person singular form of tronar, which means to thunder. Unlike llover and nevar, which only ever appear in the third-person singular form, tronar can actually be used as an action. It means to boom or to make an incredibly loud sound. It is way more common to hear it in the third-person singular form referring to the weather.
It’s unclear why it’s not in the subjunctive form, like llover, but then again, this line isn’t complete.
Second Verse
Eh, no tengo mucho que ofrecerte, ves
This line is pretty simple. Ofrecerte is “to offer you.” Ves literally means “you see.” It’s added here as a bit of a filler word. This line means “I don’t have a lot to offer you.”
Un par de canciones pa’ cantarte bien
Let’s get the less interesting parts of this line out of the way first. Un par means “a pair” and canciones is the plural form of canción, which means a song. Cantarte bien is “to sing for you well.”
So what the heck does pa’ mean?
It’s a shortened, very colloquial form of para. You’ll hear it a lot in songs. To be honest, I just hear it as para.
So this line means “a pair of songs to sing well for you.”
En mi cartera treinta primaveras de amor
Cartera is a wallet or a bag. Primavera is Spring, as in the season. Trienta is thirty.
This line means “In my wallet/bag, 30 springtimes of love.”
Mis poemas pa’ todo el mes
This line is also pretty simple. It just means “my poems for all of the month.” It’s one of the things that he can offer her.
Escucho los latidos de tu corazón
Son pasos que se acercan más y más a mí
Latidos del corazón are heartbeats. Unlike in English, where heartbeat is usually singular, it is plural in Spanish. Latido comes from the word latir, which means to beat, but only in the sense of a rhythmic beating. It’s only ever used with something like a heart, a pulse, or music.
Paso is a step, as in walking. Acercan comes from the verb acercar, which means to approach or to get closer to something. It is followed by a to indicate the destination. Más y más means “more and more.”
The line doesn’t translate super cleanly into English because heartbeat is generally singular in English, but it would be “I hear the beats of your heart. They are steps that are walking closer and closer towards me.”
El mundo gira como un vals
Y bailo al son de tu vivir
Gira is the third-person singular form of the word girar, which means to turn. If you’re ever in a taxi or an Uber in a Spanish-speaking country, you’ll hear this word a lot from the GPS.
Vals is the Spanish word for waltz.
So the first part of the line is “the world turns like a waltz.”
Son is the sound. The second part also uses tu vivir instead of tu vida. There is a little bit of a nuance between these two words. Vivir, which can be used as a noun, represents the ongoing action or process of living rather than the abstract concept of life itself, which would be vida.
Quite literally, the second part is “I dance to sound of your living.”
Second Chorus
The second chorus is almost the same as the first chorus, except that it adds two lines. I won’t repeat the first part here, but I’ll explain the two lines that are added.
Súbete a mi nave
Súbete is the second-person command form of the word subirse. Subir generally means to ascend, but when used as a reflexive form, it means to get on or to get up into something. It’s commonly used to refer to getting into a vehicle. In this case, the vehicle is nave, which means ship and often implies spaceship. We know that he is likely talking about a (hypothetical) spaceship because of the next line.
So this line means “get on my spaceship.”
Pongamos rumbo a un mundo que te haga sonreír
Rumbo is not a male Roomba. It means direction or course. In this case, poner rumbo is to set a course towards something. This line uses pongamos, which is the first-person plural (we) command form of the word poner. It’s used to mean “let’s do something.”
Un mundo is a world, which is how we know that he is asking her to board a very hypothetical spaceship.
In Spanish, you can use the word hacer in the sense of making someone do something. Te haga sonreír is “that will make you smile.” It uses the subjunctive because it’s a very hypothetical event.
Altogether, this line means “Let’s set a course for a world that will make you smile.”
Breakdown
Te llevaré donde la luz del sol nos mueva
Llevaré is the first-person singular future tense of the verb llevar. It means “I will bring you.”
La luz del sol is “the light of the sun,” since luz means light and sol means sun.
Altogether, this line means “I will bring you to where the light of the sun will move us.”
Donde los sueños ahora están por construir
This line translates as “where the dreams are about to be built.” In this context, por indicates something that is about to happen or is in the process of happening.
Te enseñaré a nadar entre un millón de estrellas
Si te quedas junto a mí
This line uses a lot of the same grammatical constructs seen in other places in the song, so I won’t spend too long on the grammar.
It translates as “I will teach you how to swim among a million stars if you stay with me.”
Enseñar can mean to teach or to show. Nadar is to swim. Entre is between or among.