So the newspapers are telling us a certain American electee is known in Mexico as “el Malo,” which they (the news sources) translate as “the bad one.” Is that the best translation? Would it reasonable to translate that as “the evil one,” or am I engaging in some kind of cultural folly by jumping to that conclusion?
Both would work depending on the case, which one to choose would depend on context and there are other possible translations for other cases. “Bad” in English and malo in Spanish have similar usages (not exactly equivalent though); English “evil” and Spanish malvado require agency and will.
“The good, the bad and the ugly” gets reordered into el bueno, el feo y el malo, Enio Morricone earworm.
Este melocotón está malo: this peach has gone bad. Peaches can’t go evil.
Mi hermano está malo: my brother is sick (medically).
Es un hombre muy malo: that dude is evil.
Es el malo de la película: he’s the movie’s bad guy.
A grand mal seizure is very bad, but it is not very evil.
OTOH, “malevolent” means doing/wishing evil on others (opposite of benevolent). See also benediction (prayer/blessing) and malediction (curse)
Kinda fits into either category, although Google-Translate says “El Malo” = “The Bad.” If Spanish-English dictionaries are saying the same thing, it seems likely that “The Bad One” is the best translation.
On the other hand, if they use the surname appended with “El Malo”, perhaps the better translation would be John Smith The Bad since other leaders have had monikers that translated to English thus.
It is also not very Spanish, as of last check. In that particular instance, mal has the meaning of illness.
Those words/phrases do not derive from Spanish. You have to be careful that cognates in French (source of grand mal) Latin (source of malevolent), or Italian are not always exact.
I think both meanings apply here: to the electee as “the Bad” and to the US as having a grave illness.
So it could be an unmentionable disease or rash?
The Malo.
You’re welcome.
No, because mal and malo are not the same word.
It may be a mistranslation of el Mallow, “the squishy one.”
The wifi here is mala, it keeps kicking us out 
mal:
- adjective “malo”, used before a noun that is masculine and singular: mal día (a bad day)
from 2 to 5, masculine noun: - that which is the opposite of good, that which moves away from legality and honesty
- damage or offense someone suffers on themselves or their property
- calamity
- illness
malo (m) or mala (f):
1 to 12 are adjectives.
-
Something negative, missing those qualities one would expect it to have by its nature, function or destiny.
-
Bad for health.
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Opposed to logic or morality.
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Constantly ill-behaved (also used as a noun)
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Sick
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+de (preposition): Making the action signified by the following infinitive difficult: Juan es malo de contentar, it is difficult to make Juan happy (contentar = to make happy, to satisfy)
-
Painful, disgusting
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Said of an object, broken or spoiled
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Clumsy, careless, specially in their profession
-
Unfavorable
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Evil
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Usually said of a young boy: troublemaker
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masculine noun: the devil (not “a” devil, but the big one)
-
femenine noun: a specific card in some games
Beware of False Friends.
–Mark