No Good Deed Goes Unpunished?

Question

Hey there, I would love to have a precise translation for this saying: "No good deed goes unpunished."

In other words, those who do good are so often and almost inevitably criticized for it.

I could say something like this in Spanish, but it would stray and butcher it, I fear. :( Please help me out.

Answer 1

¡Hola!, TheStatelessMan :

There is an equivalent phrase in our Span¡shD!ct Phrasebook. The Spanish expression is not word for word with the English phrase, but the concept is all or substantially all the same.
Look here: ---> No Good Deed....

  Be well,
Merry Christmas season,
Moe

Oh man, you guys are amazing. Thank you. - TheStatelessMan, Dec 10, 2015

Answer 2

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/no-good-deed-ever-goes-unpunished.838121/

The above link provides: Ninguna buena acción queda sin castigo. (Similar to that that Feliz provides). But also some regional idiomatic options, including the one Moe links.

Gotcha. I used this one in my presentation, but now it seems someone has another phrase. SpanishDict never fails. - TheStatelessMan, Dec 10, 2015

Answer 3

Hello statelessman,

Welcome to the Spanishdict forum

Hey there, I would love to have a precise translation for this saying: "No good deed goes unpunished."In other words, those who good are so often and almost inevitably criticized for it. I could say something like this in Spanish, but it would stray and butcher it, I fear. :( Please help me out.

Firstly, please do not be afraid to attempt translations,, in the future! You, like all of us, will almost certianly make mistakes...that is part of the learning process! The main thing is that we learn from our mistakes and move on! We have probably all 'butchered' a new language we are trying to learn, but the natives of both languages realize that we are trying to learn and improve, so we try to patient and understanding with each other!

Secondly, I would say that this is a lttle tricky to translate!

In my experience of learning and speaking Spanish, I believe that you would translate these sentences differently form each other. I am not a native speaker, but these are my best attempts, and I would say:

1.No good deed goes unpunished = No hay buenas acciones (obras) que quedan sin castigo. (o quedan impune)

o Ninguna buena acción queda sin castigo (o quedan impune)

This sentence is in the passive voice.ie: the subject who does/carries out the action is not mentioned! The Spanish do not use the passive voice often but it is used for refrains and idioms

2 Those (people) who do good (deeds) are so often and almost inevitably criticized for it.(ie: for being good) This sentence refers to a subject: 'those', although in this case, the subject is not clearly specified.

Con gran frecuencia y casi inevitablemente la gente critica a esas personas que hacen buenas acciones

If you require 100% accuracy please wait for further confirmation from native speakers!

I hope this helps

Corrijan mi español si es necesario, por favor

Thanks, mate. I agree. It is tough, but I appreciate you having a good crack at it. - TheStatelessMan, Dec 3, 2015

You are welcome :) Let's see what the natives and non natives make of my attempts lol - FELIZ77, Dec 3, 2015