Has anyone done a Cardenas Mexican Market shop, for which you have to use Google translator to translate your answers into Spanish? The shop summary suggests this is easy, but it still makes me a bit nervous. The $70 reimbursement appeals to me, and I'd love to hear from anyone who has done one of these.

JenW Wrote:
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> Has anyone done a Cardenas Mexican Market shop,
> for which you have to use Google translator to
> translate your answers into Spanish? The shop
> summary suggests this is easy, but it still makes
> me a bit nervous. The $70 reimbursement appeals to
> me, and I'd love to hear from anyone who has done
> one of these.

I just did one. I haven't gotten any feedback yet, and I'm holding my breath, wondering if I did okay, or if I failed utterly. I'll list the problem areas first.

My big point of concern is, out of the six departments, I only found one, the meat department, with tare weight listed. (All their pre-packaged meats list it.) In the other departments, though obviously I didn't look at every item, I didn't see anything but net weight. So, I just bought an advertised item. And, I'm wondering if I was just blind, or if that's the way it is.

The other, well, more a bone of contention than a point of concern is that, in one department, the only advertised item cost 20 dollars. So, I had to buy it, and when I tasted it, I thought it was yucky. So, call that a $50 reimbursement, rather than $70. Of course, that's why the reimbursement is so high, as they point out in the guidelines.

Okay, to the good side of things. The interactions seemed easy. I drifted to another aisle and played with my cell phone, texting notes to myself. They don't demand scripted questions--you can pretty much do what you want. The store is interesting. There's plenty of good food there.

I feel a serious lack of trust toward Google translator, but they say we can use it. When I applied for the shop, I put in the 'notes' section that I was going to use it. You notice that they don't ask us to run our narrative through it! I suspect that the people who are going to read the report are competent in English, and that the main point of Google translator is to make it easy for them if we happen to use a specialized word. Let's turn it around. I could be fluently bilingual and still not know what the Spanish word for 'catfish' was.

Good luck! They aren't really in my territory, so I don't know if I'll ever do another one, but I'd enjoy hearing how it went for you.

Just saw this post. I love this MSC but hated this shop worst than anything. The shop was okay except for not being able to find more than two items with tare--meat and home made guacamole in the cocina. You had to remember hair styles, colors, clothes tops and bottoms, names, features etc on at least six employees--more if they couldn't speak English and got someone who did to help you. Heavy narratives. After my first half hour on Sassie, I still had 100 questions to answer. I said never, ever again, but I might try again anyway as I would do it very differently.

Also, the bakery and the pasteria are different departments although next to one another and manned by the same employees. I did get some good food and the prices were reasonable. I did not buy the $20 cake and they did not mark me down for that. I bought a $2 creme thing instead.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2014 03:22PM by whiterosie.

Ishmael Wrote:
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I could be fluently bilingual and
> still not know what the Spanish word for 'catfish'
> was.

I always thought it was "barbo" but Google Translator says that it's "bagre."

Out of curiosity, I decided to check various translation sites. It could also be "siguro" and apparently even "pez gato" is acceptable in some places. And some sites list "barbo" as well.

I guess it is like eating eggplant in the US, but having to know that it is called aubergine in Great Britain and anywhere that British English is common, except for India, where it is also eggplant.

So, if you order "John Dory" (two English words) in Europe, what kind of fish to you get? In the US, if you find it at all, it is called St. Peter's Fish, and in Spain it is called "gallo". That one drove me crazy for a long time in Belgium and the Netherlands where they had specialized "food translation" dictionaries, all printed in the UK, or course. And if you are looking for Belgian Endive anywhere else but the US, ask for chicory if the person speaks English and you have some hope of getting it. Belgian Endive, luckily, never turned up on a vocabulary test when I was taking either Spanish or German.