How does the concept of a "buff" work in Spanish?

Question

I am writing about hobbies. The hobbies are being listed as short headlines, with an article to accompany the headline.

In English, I would use the term "buff" to make it more obvious what the heading is referring to.

For example:

• Architecture Buff
• Geography Buff
• History Buff
• Archeology Buff
• Train Buff

Would this 'buff' concept translate to Spanish, or am I better of just listing the activities in the heading, without using the word 'buff'.

Research I have done.

1. Spanish dict lists aficionado, entusiasta, fanático as equivalents. “aficionado a la arquitectura“, “aficionado a la geografía“, “aficionado a la historia“, "aficionado a la arqueología", etc seem to generate good results. But the rest do not.

2. On the Spanish entry for Trains on Wikipedia they list 'entusiasta del tren', but it links to the English article.

On the basis of this research, I am certain that “aficionado a la arquitectura“, “aficionado del tren“, “aficionado a la geografía“ would be fine. However, as I am not a native speaker, I would appreciate native input if such wordings are acceptable or if a Spanish native would just list the activity without qualifying it.

Answer 1

Indeed, the translation of "buff" (in the sense of "hobbyist") is aficionado, entusiasta, or fanático, where aficionado is less strong than entusiasta, which is in turn less strong than fanático.

Whether you list the activities with or without the qualifying "aficionados" depends mostly on your writing style and on what you are writing about. If I were writing about the hobbies themselves, I would just use the names of the activities as headings. If I were writing about the people who practise these activities (the buffs themselves), I would probably use headings with the word "aficionados" in plural, as in "Aficionados a la arquitectura", "Aficionados al ferrocarril", etc. This is mostly to make the headings correspond to what is in the text: I would find it strange to see a paragraph with heading "Aficionados al ferrocarril" that only talks about trains.

Answer 2

I would simply state the Headings without "buff" if you are only using the word to emphasize the space between the words. Concepts are very difficult to translate literally.