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