MenuPalTranslating dish names word for word
A flat white is not a white thing that is flat, and a mince and cheese pie has no neat equivalent in Japanese. Translating the words of a local dish produces nonsense. Keep the dish's name and add a short explanation of what it is, the way a good waiter would.
Using the wrong Chinese
Chinese is written in two scripts. Visitors from mainland China usually read Simplified Chinese; visitors from Taiwan and Hong Kong usually read Traditional. A menu in only one of them reads as foreign to the other half of your Chinese speaking guests.
Leaving allergens to chance
Running allergen names through a general translation tool for each dish risks vague or wrong wording, which is the last place you want it. Allergen and dietary labels should use fixed wording, checked once for each language and used every time.
Pages that are half translated
A menu with translated dish names but buttons, notes and opening hours in another language leaves guests guessing which parts they can trust. Either everything a guest sees is in their language, or the whole page stays in one language they can fall back on.
Translations that go stale
You change a price or swap an ingredient in English, and the Japanese menu still shows the old one. Translations need to follow the original, with changed dishes flagged so someone checks them.
Scripts that read right to left
Arabic and Hebrew read from right to left. A menu that translates the words but keeps a left to right layout looks broken to those guests.
No way to fix a mistake
If you cannot see and edit a translation, you cannot fix the one a guest points out. Every translation should sit beside your original, ready to correct.
How MenuPal handles each of these
- Dishes are explained, not translated word for word
- Simplified and Traditional Chinese are chosen from each guest's phone settings
- Allergen and dietary labels use fixed, checked wording for each language
- A language only goes live once everything on the page is ready in it
- When you change a dish, its translations update and anything you checked is flagged to look at again
- Arabic and Hebrew menus are laid out right to left
- Every translation can be reviewed and edited beside your original