Our house has very lovely tile floors throughout that keep the floors cool during the day. However the wood chairs have a tendency to make a lot of noise when moved. Stacey mentioned that we should look for some felt for the chair legs the next time we go shopping. I said, “yeah any idea where we would begin to look?”
The next day we went on a shopping trip into Tilaran and we happened across a fabric store while just exploring! Perfect! Now, fabric stores in Central America are much different than in the US. Think of something that is half the size of your average 7-11 and has most everything behind the counters.
Have I mentioned that our Spanish is pretty bad? We are starting to remember the Spanish we learned as Teens, but it is slow. So of course the fabric store that we think has what we need, has not a single person that speaks English.
So we ask for “felt” and get strange looks back. I whip out my phone and fire up Google Translate that tells me the word is “sintió”. That gets me more blank stares. Then I show them what Google Translate has written and all 5 people in the store read it resulting in more strange looks.
Google Translate will also speak words and phrases, so I hit the button and get more looks and shrugs. At this point we are ready to give up and leave knowing we just have to keep looking for a place that has an English speaker.
Then a light bulb comes on. Felt has a very unique look to it, so I do a google image search for felt. The shop owners eyes light up, she reaches right below where she is standing and pulls out…A piece of felt! She says “Feltió”!
We have had a couple of these where even though we have Google Translate set to Costa Rican dialect, it makes a wild translation that no one understands.
so WTF Google? I guess Google Translate does not do Spanglish!