You might’ve noticed something unusual in your Chump Lady feed — articles in Spanish! That’s thanks to the AWESOME Chump Nation patrons of Patreon — I’ve hired a wonderful translator who is multilingual in snark — and now the top posts here will be available in Spanish.
Starting today, that’s The Humiliating Dance of Pick Me — El humillante zapateo de ‘¡Elígeme a mí!’ — and the Unified Theory of Cake — La teoría unificada del postre. And more to come shortly. I hope to get all the foundational texts translated, and then some letters on occasion to keep the page fresh.
It’s a bit of an undertaking, but none of it would be possible without the patron angels who pay it forward. I’m very grateful. For years I’ve gotten requests about translating the book into various languages — but thing is, I don’t control that — the publisher controls the translation rights. However, I do control the content on this blog.
I’ve had people write to me asking permission (or informing me after the fact) that they’ve translated articles here in Afrikaans, Danish, Serbian, Mandarin, French… Frankly, I don’t know what far-flung corners of the earth my potty mouth has visited.
But I always hesitated to bring translation here, because I couldn’t give people the same experience English-speakers get. If I couldn’t read the comments, how could I moderate the page? (Trust me, a huge amount of the time suck of running a blog is behind the scenes moderating.)
But finally I got over myself. Something is better than nothing. It doesn’t need to be perfect. (YES IT DOES. Shhhhh! ) The articles are up, but there’s no comment feature. However, folks can comment in the forums. I’m going to create a Spanish-language section. (I’ll have to leave it to you good people to tell me if there’s spam or trolling.)
It’s an experiment in Global Chump Domination. I mean, if you’re going to change the narrative — go big or go home, right?
Hope you’ll share the new pages with our necio (chump in Spanish) friends.
Yours,
Chica Necia (Chump Lady)
If you’re going to change the narrative, do it in as many languages as possible!
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Aw, damn. One less excuse to not practice mi Español.
You know, you’re the anti domestic violence angel/warrior, I realize.
She is! That’s actually what got me to this blog – it was my experience with domestic violence and not the cheating itself. Changing the narrative is powerful for SO MANY people (and cheating almost never occurs in a vacuum).
Siempre contigo!!
Another great thing Chumps can be doing in the “gain a life” category. Get your asses on Duolingo (it’s free) and start teaching yourselves a second language.
I’ve been learning modern Hebrew and German for 170+ days now.
Congrats on learning Hebrew and German! Gut gemacht!
As an addendum – for those who are more advanced than Duolingo – Clozemaster is also an excellent tool to learn languages if you are intermediate level. You learn languages via context by filling the missing word in! It’s also free.
I have become conversationally fluent in Swedish (and by extension, understanding written Norwegian and Danish despite never having learned them) by using these two tools, and by speaking with native speakers as well.
Lämna en fuskare, uppnå ett liv!
(I’m pretty sure everyone can figure this one out!)
Congrats on learning Swedish! Bra gjort!
I agree that learning a foreign language is an excellent way of gaining a life. I realised I had taken five years of French in school, but couldn’t speak shit. So now I am on my second semester of evening class French. Yay!
As a side note: “fuskare” in Swedish means a cheater, but only in games and such. It does not mean adulterer. I am struggling myself to find a good, snarky Swedish word for adulterer. Perhaps some fellow Swedish chump can chime in?
Seems “Walkaway Woman” is a native Swede and mentioned “otrogen” (which means “unfaithful”).
There are many colourful swear words in Swedish too, which would be equally appropriate!
“Lämna en otrogen, få ett liv.” is a better translation. I’m a native speaker. “Fuskare” is someone who cheats at games or tests, whereas “otrogen” means unfaithful.
Ahh yeah, you guys are 100% right! I still have much to learn, but it seems I learned/remembered something new today. Sadly, I did know the word “otrogen” was “unfaithful” before, but didn’t think to use that word instead!
I’ve only been learning for about 12 months or so – thanks for the correction!
Pressed submit before I should have.
I should also mention that when I said “conversationally fluent” before, I meant “can string together a conversation without ever swapping to English, though might sound a bit weird to a native speaker on occasion” and as you saw, occasional weird word choices.
brilliant, way to go Chump Lady!
Amazing! Love this, Tracy! Way to go!
Viva la revolución ❤️❤️❤️
More chumps helped it’s awessome! Thanks for the clarification I thought it might be a glitch.
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Wow! Just Wow!
Wonderful news. Xxxx
Awesome, Tracy!
I looooove this soooooo much!! J’adore 😉
Ah, this is great. Thanks!
As a native Spanish speaker, I hope it helps a lot of people out there. For me, I’ll stick to the English content only, I tried to read the Spanish content and it was so weird haha. My brain is used to read CL in English lol.
Anyways, I’ll sure let you know if I see any trolley comment in the Spanish content.
Thanks again!
Thank You! This is great.
Wow! Way to subvert the dominant paradigm, CL! Deprogramming the social message and making them aware that women can and must leave the marriage when they are betrayed! (The same goes for real male chumps in that society, too.) And to know they are not alone is so empowering!
I love that you even have foundational texts.
haha, I thought the email was spam and unsubscribed. Preach, Chica!
This is amazing!!! There is such a strong prevalence of infidelity in the Latino culture. The worst part is that many times it’s readily accepted and dismissed because “all men cheat”. I can now recommend your blog to my Spanish speaking friends!! ❤️
…and there’s plenty of self-entitled latinas out there too who cheat. I know, I married one!
But yeah Nena, I’d have to agree about infidelity being “readily accepted” from what I know and have seen with STBxW’s family (particularly the men of her father’s generation). I read once of her country’s people being described as short-term thinkers; very much act first and think later (if at all and of course then blame everyone else).
…y tan bueno que el mensaje de CL+CN sigue en otras partes
I agree Out, cheaters come in all genders…but in our culture a woman cheating is seen as a “slut” and a man cheating is just being a man, definitely a double standard! Like CL says, that narrative MUST be changed!
Hmm I think maybe it already has changed @Nena or maybe it varies from country to country
I can only give my own personal observation, but it has staggered me to see how virtually all of STBxW’s friends (and family members too) have accepted her affair. Some have even been actively helping her with the affair who were chumps themselves! I don’t think I’ll ever understand that one. Crazy…
But again yeah you’re spot on — the narrative MUST be changed — us chumps need to be vocal about this not being acceptable under any terms — just as divorce laws are changing to no-fault then I’d also like to see infidelity legally classified as abuse (similar to how France has recently introduced laws on domestic violence) — then instead of it becoming ‘acceptable’ that a woman can cheat, it must become unacceptable that a man can cheat — often new laws are the only way this can progress; e.g. a guy is not likely to get shamed from his cheating as he’ll just go back to his latino mates and boast & joke about it; but if there were actual real consequences for his infidelity……hmm
Oh and on the latino theme — I was reading this morning about A-Rod & J-Lo — another car-crash in slow motion (file under “they never change”)
Felicitaciones Chica Necia! Estoy orgullosa de ti!
About two BILLION people speak English and/or Spanish (almost one billion native speakers), so that’s covering A LOT of chumps!
You amaze me!!! This is great news!!
Dear Tracy, I am very happy you are jumping in to help Spanish speakers. I am Mexican and have been reading you since 2014. I love your blog and it has been extremely helpful.
Now, with all my respect I just want to bring to your attention that “chump” is a very difficult word that does not have an easy translation in Spanish. It translates like “dummy”. The word “necia” means “stubborn”, which doesn’t give the meaning of chump at all. And after reading the translation of the theory of cake I noticed that the chumps were given the word “necios” or “stubborn”. I think this will be very confusing to a Spanish speaking audience that is not familiar at all with your writing.
Sadly I don’t have an solution, since again, chump is a difficult word with implied meaning of having been deceived. Nothing like that in Spanish.
Hope your translator can find a solution.
Best!
Gaby
Gaby, would ‘tonta’ work?
Hmm could be a difficult one but a nice challenge to find a universal Spanish equivalent to chump, especially as there can be quite wide differences in words & phrases not just between castellano and español latino but from country to country.
I know that Colombians tend to use “bobo/boba” a lot. I’ve heard “tonto/tonta” many times too. However I can’t ever remember hearing “necio/necia” being used at all.
“Tonto/Tonta” might be a better word to use as ClearWaters said; e.g. “¡Que tonto para creer en esa mujer!”
I don’t know but tonto/tonta sounds a little insulting, no?
I would translate it as stupid.
The chump spanish translation would have to imply to be something like absentminded/don’t notice what’s in front of your face.
I’m not Colombian but I like bobo/boba better.
What do ya’ll think?
My thoughts exactly! The Spanish translation is perfect except for that word…. necio does mean stubborn but I can’t think of a better word. The closest I found is “ingenuo” since that means gullible, which means easily fooled, which means chump! ????
I’m not a native speaker so can’t comment exactly — but if you look at the definition of “chump” then that might be a good alternative
Chump — A foolish or easily deceived person
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/chump
Can I please, please, please be the translator for Italian???? This country needs you, Chump Lady!!! I am bilingual (Italian-English) and have worked with languages extensively (translations, teaching, etc.) PLEEEEAAAAASSSSEEE!!!!!
The translation of your work is so very needed, CL! I hope many of our fellow Spanish-speaking chumps will stumble upon this blog and free themselves of the abuse by their partners. This is indeed “good works.”
Qué buenas noticias!
How awesome!! Chump Lady, if you ever need something translated into Polish, let me know 😀
Began a list of acronyms when I started reading Chump Lady. For example:
EA emotional affair
PA physical affair
WS (wayward spouse) (Chump Lady prefers “cheater”)
BS (betrayed spouse) (Chump Lady prefers “chump”)
DARVO deny, attack, reverse victim and offender
OWife (mashup of OW and wife; wifed-up OW)
Then I started to copy good quotes because truth! Insight! Then I started to copy funny insults. Because of the painful glee of spleen-venting. For example:
alp-ho (mashup of Alpo and whore; i.e., she’s UGLY!)
opportunist whoreface (no explanation needed)
nasty-ass whore-demon (ditto)
subhuman pond scum hologram of a husband (more ditto)
flaming turd shit straight out of Satan’s ass (still more ditto)
selfish, self-absorbed, clueless she-bitch from Satan’s dog’s ass (yup, more ditto)
Ah, sheer poetry. How do you translate that? You’d need someone who translates Tolkien. I’m sure native speakers of Spanish are capable of their own juicy insults. Germans would end up with one of their yard-long words. Would love to feed “Gladys McDogface” or “low-hanging fruit-floozy” or “Lord Sparkledick von Glitterballs” through Google, but fear the Internet would break.
subhuman pond scum………
that brought a smile to my face this windy morning — love it — must remember that one
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