Uses of the pluperfect subjunctive

[dupond]

Hi everyone

I recently came across the following sentence and translation on http://context.reverso.net/traduccion/espanol-ingles/en+lugar+de:

Hubiera disfrutado mucho en lugar de morir ahogado.

He could be having such a good time instead of being in that awful shipwreck.

Is the translation correct? I've never seen the pluperfect subjunctive used that way before.


Thanks

[pjt33]

He would have enjoyed himself a lot instead of dying by drowning.

Unfortunately, without a paragraph or two of context on either side it's very hard to tell whether the translation works as a whole. It's clearly intended to be a static rather than a dynamic translation, so the change of verb sense could be an intentional alteration which improves the sense of the passage.

[dupond]

Can hubiera disfrutado be used interchangeably with habría disfrutado?

[Rusty]

No. The subjunctive mood is used for a reason, but we don't know the context.
You cannot substitute the conditional mood and convey the same meaning.

[dupond]

I'm afraid I only have that sentence without the surrounding passages. It came from a list of examples of using "en lugar de" in a sentence.

What would be an example of a sentence in which you'd use "hubiera + past participle" to mean "would have (done something)" instead of "habría + past participle?