Tourists keep pointing at the menu, or a regular from the office next door asks what's in the soup, and you start wondering about a second language. Before you add one, keep writing the menu in the language you use now until the same group of guests asks for another one at the table, again and again. Every language you add is one more place to change a price or a dish, each time it changes. And once AI has translated the menu, someone who knows your kitchen should read every line before a guest does.
Who is actually sitting at your tables
A list of the world's most spoken languages won't help you here. The people in your dining room will, and they usually fall into three groups.
Visitors passing through are the first: tourists, hotel guests, people in town for a conference. They come once and can't ask a regular what's good, so they lean on the menu more than anyone. The second group lives or works nearby but reads another language more comfortably, like expat staff from a company down the street, or students. They come back, so a good translation keeps paying off. The third is the language your orders arrive in. If you take delivery or pickup and the messages, calls or notes come in another language, that tells you as much as what you hear at the table.
You can sort them with what you already have. Ask the floor team which language they switch to most often and at roughly how many tables in a normal week, then give it a week or two before deciding, since one conference weekend can skew what you think you see. If a language comes up at nearly every service, add it. If it comes up a couple of times a month and your servers get by with a smile and a gesture, the upkeep probably isn't worth it yet.
Guests pick the language on their own phone, whether you run a QR menu or a digital menu, so you never choose for them. What you choose is which languages you're willing to keep up to date.
What each extra language costs you after launch
The translation itself is the small part. The real cost turns up on an ordinary Tuesday, when you change the price of the lunch special, swap a side dish or add a seasonal dessert. With one language you make the change once. With three you make it three times, and you have to remember all three.
Two things go wrong most often. You forget, and the new dish exists in your main language and nowhere else, so guests reading the second language never see it. Or you update halfway: the price is fixed everywhere, but one language still names the old side dish. A guest who runs into that is less likely to blame the translation than to wonder what the kitchen is actually serving.
After a menu change it's easy to lose track of which language still describes the old dish. In FineDine, the Translation Center shows a completion percentage for each language, so one that has fallen behind stands out, and the Untranslated filter lists what's missing. Its tabs for menus, modifiers, surveys and others are a reminder that translation covers more than dish names. An extra like "add cheese" and the feedback survey need translating too.
Before you add a language, decide who owns it. One person with a short routine after every menu change is enough. If nobody on your team reads that language, you can't tell when it has gone wrong, which is a good reason to wait.
After the AI translates: read it like a cook
The Translation Center can auto-translate with AI, which gives you a first draft without typing out every line. Treat it as a draft. The editor shows your original and the translation side by side, so the read-through is easy: what you wrote and what the guest will read sit in the same row.
Whoever reads it should know your kitchen, not only the language. That might be you or your chef. If you bring in an outside native speaker, sit them next to someone who can explain the dishes, because a fluent translation of the wrong dish is still wrong.
Start with dish names. Some should be translated, some should stay as they are, and some need both, the original name plus a short plain description. AI has no way of knowing which one your guests need. A regional dish translated word for word can end up as something nobody would order, or as a different dish altogether. What matters is that the name on the guest's screen is one they can say to your server.
Then the allergen and diet wording. If a description names an ingredient, or says a dish is vegetarian or contains nuts, the translated line should say the same thing in words a guest would recognize. Compare each description with what the kitchen actually does, dish by dish. Small qualifiers like "may contain" or "without" are easy to lose in translation, so check that they survived. Where the text and the plate disagree, fix the text, and if you can't settle it, rewrite the description until you can.
Units and quantities come next. Grams and ounces, centiliters and fluid ounces, "a portion" and "for two" don't always travel well. Decide whether to keep the original units or convert them and apply that choice to every line, because a mix tends to confuse guests more than either one alone.
When a language is done, go through the menu once more the way a guest would, on a phone switched to that language. Long names that wrap badly or lines that get cut off are much easier to spot there than in the editor. If you're also reworking how the original-language menu looks on screen, restaurant menu design is the place to start.
Prices and currency
A translation can read well and still mislead on price. Languages write numbers differently. Some use a comma for decimals and a dot for thousands, others the reverse, so a price like 1.250 can mean one thousand two hundred fifty or one and a quarter. The currency symbol also sits before the number in some languages and after it in others. Read every price in every language and check that it matches the main menu exactly.
The currency itself lives in Settings > Price Options, so change it there instead of typing a symbol into item names or descriptions. If some guests think in another currency, a converted figure in a description goes out of date as soon as the exchange rate moves, so it's safer to leave it out.
| Check | What tends to go wrong | Who should read it |
|---|---|---|
| Dish names | Word-for-word translation of a regional dish, or a name guests can't use to ask for it | Chef or someone who knows the dish |
| Allergen and diet wording | A qualifier like "may contain" or "without" dropped, or an ingredient named differently from the kitchen's | Kitchen lead, line by line |
| Units | Mixed grams and ounces, or a portion size that no longer matches | Whoever writes the recipes |
| Price format | Comma and dot swapped, symbol in the wrong place | Anyone, against the main menu |
| Modifiers and extras | Options translated differently from the dishes they attach to | Floor manager |
Frequently Asked Questions
- Should I add a language just because a few tourists visit in summer?
- Only if the same language comes up at the table regularly. A seasonal peak can be a reason to translate before the season starts, but not if you won't keep the menu updated through the quiet months. And if a few of your servers can already help guests in that language, you may be fine without a translated menu.
- Can I rely on AI translation without anyone checking it?
- No. AI gives you a useful first pass in the Translation Center, but dish names, allergen wording, units and prices need someone who knows your kitchen to read them. Treat what it produces as a draft.
- Do I have to translate every dish name?
- Not necessarily. Some dishes work better with their original name and a short description in the guest's language, so guests can still order by the name your servers say. Decide it dish by dish.
- What happens when I add a new dish later?
- It has to be translated in every language you offer. In the Translation Center, the Untranslated filter shows what's still missing, and each language's completion percentage shows which one is behind.
- How much does it cost to add languages?
- Pricing and language options are on the pricing page. The time it takes to keep each language current is a separate cost.
