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Ferrabelle en español: a note for Spanish speakers

By Chris Ayers 5 min read

Ferrabelle speaks Spanish. The whole app, every screen, every reminder, every line of the Fe Score, is available in English and in Spanish. This note is for anyone who wants to use it that way, or wants to know what “available in Spanish” means before they bother.

One thing to say up front: this website, including this article, is still in English. The app is translated. The site is not yet.

How to switch

There are two ways, and you only need one.

Inside the app, open Settings and find Language. You can pick Phone, English or Español. Phone means the app follows the languages your phone already speaks, and it is the default. If your phone is in Spanish, you will never need to touch this.

On Android 13 and later, your phone can also set a language for one app at a time, separate from the phone’s own language. Android’s developer documentation gives two paths: Settings > System > Languages & Input > App Languages > (select an app), or Settings > Apps > (select an app) > Language. So if your phone runs in English but you would rather read your cycle in Spanish, you can do that for Ferrabelle alone and leave everything else as it was.

Units are a separate question. By default they follow your phone’s region rather than the language, and you can change them under Units in Settings. If your phone is set to the United States, you keep pounds and Fahrenheit even when the app is in Spanish. If it is set to Mexico or Colombia, you get kilograms and Celsius. The app does not guess your units from the words you read.

What kind of Spanish

Neutral Latin American Spanish, and the app addresses you as tú. The Spanish was written to a style guide before a word of it went in, and that guide carries two rules I care about more than any glossary.

The first is register. Short, plain sentences, like the English. No corporate voice.

The second is a hard limit. A Spanish line may never claim more than the English line it translates. It cannot add a diagnosis, a dose, or the idea that a phase makes you stronger, if the English does not say it. The two versions have to be equally careful, because the health rules that bind the app bind it in both languages.

Some terms are kept as they are: Ferrabelle, Fe Score, Health Connect, Google Play. The rest uses ordinary words. Your period is tu periodo, your cycle is tu ciclo, the phases are menstrual, folicular, ovulatoria and lútea, a workout is un entrenamiento, and a backup is una copia de seguridad.

On Google Play the listing is translated too, in Spanish (Latin America) and Spanish (United States), so what you read in the store before you install matches what you read in the app after.

A word on Spanish-language health information

An app can show you your pattern. It should not be where you learn what a period is, in any language. For plain, reliable Spanish-language health information, the US National Library of Medicine runs MedlinePlus en español, and its page on menstruation is a good place to start. It opens with this:

“La menstruación, también llamada período, es el sangrado vaginal normal que ocurre como parte del ciclo mensual de las mujeres y niñas.”

And a few lines later it says what every cycle app should say somewhere near the top:

“La mayoría de los ciclos menstruales duran alrededor de 28 días, pero los ciclos pueden ser más cortos o más largos y aun así ser normales.”

That second sentence is worth keeping in mind with any cycle app. Normal is wider than 28 days, and Ferrabelle learns your own cycle length instead of assuming 28, in both languages.

Why I bothered

I built this app for one person first, my wife, and then rebuilt it so anyone with an Android phone could have it. “Anyone” is not honest if the app only reads in English. A cycle and lifting log is a private thing, and private things should be in the language you think in.

The translation is finished and shipped. The website will follow when I can do it properly rather than quickly. If you use the app in Spanish and a line reads wrong, tell me. I already get the partner notes. I would like the bug reports too.

This is general information, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor about your own health.

Ferrabelle is in a closed test on Google Play right now. If you want to try it, you can join at ferrabelle.com/testers. En español: Ferrabelle está en prueba cerrada en Google Play. Si quieres probarla, entra a ferrabelle.com/testers.

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