Consider the English sentence "I wish you had gone to the party last night". I let Google Translate take a shot at translating it and I got what I think is a fairly reasonable translation: Wǒ xīwàng nǐ yǐjīng dàole zuó wǎn jùhuì. 我希望你已经到了昨晚聚会。 Now, I can get something quite different by doing a slight rephrase of the English, e.g. "I wish you had gone to last night's party". Wǒ xīwàng nǐ qùle zuó wǎn de wǎnhuì. 我希望你去了昨晚的晚会。 This translates to "I wish you went to last night's party" which is not quite the same as "I wish you had gone to last night's party." The second English sentence is more of a subjunctive feel than the first.