“I Will Wait For You” Lyrics
Style: Pasillo, vals (waltz), unrequited love song
Country: Ecuador
Listen: YouTube, Amazon
Translation:
Te esperaré.
Sé que me quieres
Y yo seré tu adoración.
En mi recuerdo, grabado estará tu nombre.
Toda la vida, te esperaré y serás mi gran amor.
I will wait for you.
I know that you love me
And I will be your adoration.
In my memory, it’s etched – your name.
All my life, I will wait for you and you will be my great love.
Cielo mío, ¿por qué me dejas llorando? *
No te olvides de mi amor.
Si tú bien sabes
Que tenerte es mi ambición.
My love, why do you leave me crying? *
Don’t forget about my love.
For you know very well
That holding you is my ambition. *
Te esperaré.
Sé que me quieres
Y yo seré tu adoración.
En mi recuerdo, grabado estará tu nombre.
Toda la vida, te esperaré y serás mi gran amor.
(x2)
I will wait for you.
I know that you love me
And I will be your adoration.
In my memory, it’s etched – your name.
All my life, I will wait for you and you will be my great love.
(x2)
Translation Notes:
Cielo mío, ¿por qué me dejas llorando?
My love, why do you leave me crying?
In Spanish, “cielo mío” (literally “my sky/heaven”) is an affectionate term similar to sweatheart or my love.
—
Si tú bien sabes / Que tenerte es mi ambición.
For you know very well / That holding you is my ambition.
The verb is tener (to have), but in English “having you is my ambition” sounds purely sexual, whereas this is meant primarily romantically, albeit in an old fashioned way that is less popular today.
Julio Jaramillo lived 1935-1978. The time periods don’t overlap, but this song reminds me strongly of Gabriel García Márquez’s Nobel-prize winning novel from 1985, Love in the Time of Cholera, which focuses on two protagonists who fall in love young, but the woman marries someone else of higher social status, and the man decides to wait for her as his true love. He still has other relationships that he doesn’t consider serious while he waits for her. The book and song probably aren’t related, but I see this type of unrequited love trope (of waiting for your believed soulmate to return to you) more in Latin American works than USA media. I suspect it goes back to colonial times. Someone should write an essay on it.
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“Te Esperare” – without accents so WordPress search finds this song lyrics translation
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