Sarna con gusto no pica. (2025)

Tambien:

"If you like the scratching then you do not mind the lice"

o

"Doing something you enjoy is never a chore".

Espero que te sirva. Saludos.

I know this is outdated, but I have a couple of suggestions to offer.

"If you like scabies, they don't hurt," is a close translation, but it would never be said in English. The answers offered by absent_155 are better, but still awkward and uncommon in English.

The following suggestions are the closest approximations of the Spanish saying I can come up with, and sound much more natural in English:

"If you had a good time, you have nothing to complain about."

OR

"You had fun. What more can you ask?"

They can pretty much be used interchangeably.

marevalous said:

"If you had a good time, you have nothing to complain about."

OR

"You had fun. What more can you ask?"

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But this idiom is not about "having a good time" at all. It simply means something may be tough but if someone has chosen it freely, they won't be suffering from it as someone else would.

totxolander said:

Don't commit the crime if u don't want to do the time

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That's a good one.

Again, I know this thread is old, but I would like to make some comments:

In Spanish

(I cannot speak for Peru or for any other Latin American country), "sarna con gusto no pica" does not mean that "si te gustó lo que hiciste o lo pasaste bien, no te quejes por las consecuencias", as themere said. It means that "something may be tough but if someone has chosen it freely, they won't be suffering from it as someone else would", as Södertjej said.

Therefore, I do not think that the idiom "Don't commit the crime if u don't want to do the time" that totxolander has proposed works for Spain (probably it does for Peru, if "sarna con gusto no pica" has there the meaning mentioned by themere).

Any suggestion for an English translation for Castilian Spanish?

The precise meaning of this idiom in Castilian Spanish is very well explained here:

Sarna con gusto no pica

Pues bien, para todas esas cosas que en principio son molestas pero que los beneficios que llevan detrás son favorables o interesantes para nosotros, se creó la expresión de hoy: sarna con gusto no pica. Porque una molestia si nos resulta placentera, deja de ser una molestia.

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This one's a tough one to translate. Where I come from (Spain) we say "Sarna con gusto no pica, pero mortifica".

I think some of the English alternatives provided come quite close but still miss the point. "Sarna con gusto no pica" means that the benefits of doing something outweigh its downsides. However, the downsides are very, very, very big. It basically means doing something which is an ordeal by and in itself.

We used this expression this morning while talking about a friend who spent many years looking for Mr Right until she finally bumped into Mr Right Now. However, Mr Right Now is a very troubled individual: moody, verbally aggressive, controlling, jealous... you know the drill. We were talking about how our friend has been looking miserable ever since the day they moved in together and that, deep down inside, she must be really unhappy. However, she's got what she so desperately wanted: a boyfriend.

That's when we said: "Well... sarna con gusto, no pica".

Palos con gusto no hacen daño también significa eso: “don’t commit the crime if you don’t want to do the time!”

Saludos!

I am very late to the party. Was talking with a friend today and I asked him how his weekend was, and he said that it was "relaxing... too relaxing, didn't some stuff I had to do. I had plenty of opportunity to get it done, just chose to relax instead".

I instinctively said "sarna con gusto no pica". To which he of course reacted with a puzzled look since he is an English speaker who doesn't peak Spanish at all. I gave him the literal translation "scabies with pleasurer doesn't itch" and with that he started to understand the meaning, but I felt it was not totally satisfactory, so I explained further: "Meaning is kind of you did what you felt like doing, yes it had some negative consequences, but oh well".

He understood, but I was not pleased with my explanation. Do you think it is good enough? Is there a better way to convey that meaning? I don't feel that any of the proposals in this thread does it well enough.

In my opinion, the true meaning of the Spanish saying is that, strangely enough, someone can find pleasure doing things that you consider absolutely horrendous/nasty.

E.g.:
-¿Sabes? Al final Carmen se va a casar con Pepe el mes que viene
- Ughh, ¿con Pepe? Sarna con gusto no pica.

There are a couple English expressions which are similar, though not exactly the same, but which might work in certain contexts:

Every cloud has a silver lining.
She (he, you...) made her bed, now she has to lie/lay in it.

This last one would work for a woman who chose to live with a man who is an asshole.

gato radioso said:

The idea of the Spanish idiom is that somebody has made a terrible mistake, everybody can see it... except he/she.

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That's not how people use it here in Spain, it's more like the downsides are minimized because the reward is so great. Like how I've heard it used most recently is someone who didn't mind driving 8 hours to get to a show because they love the band so much.

absent_155 said:

Tambien:

"If you like the scratching then you do not mind the lice"

o

"Doing something you enjoy is never a chore".

Espero que te sirva. Saludos.

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I love this one. Good job.