schnaz wrote:Why be sad when you can be glad?
¿Es correcto lo que sigue?
¿Porque sea triste cuando pudiera alegrarse?
I would say:
¿Para qué estar triste, si se puede estar feliz?But if you really want to keep the wording closer to what you started with, you could use:
¿Porqué estar triste, si puedes estar alegre?Explanations:
You can use
porqué (don't forget the accent mark) instead of
para qué, but to me
para qué sounds more natural in this context, a bit more rhetorical, like "what's the point in being sad?", which is how I understand the question's intent. Either is okay.
With feelings you use
estar, not
ser, unless you want to say that it is part of the person's personality all the time.
You should use
si here in place of
cuando. Grammatically what you're really saying is "why be sad
if you can be glad" - the use of "when" here in English is conditional not temporal, so in Spanish you translate it as
si.
I used the impersonal
se puede, but it's not incorrect to use the tú or Usted form if you are addressing someone.
Lastly,
feliz sounds more natural to me here than
alegre. All you need is an opposite of
triste; I think the English version uses "glad" in place of "happy" just because it rhymes with "sad". Since there isn't a way to make it rhyme in Spanish, I'd just go with
feliz.
