Talking to Tourists in 60 Languages: A Multilingual Menu Guide

When a foreign guest opens a menu, they shy away from anything they don't understand and order the most familiar, most ordinary option — both the guest experience and the restaurant's revenue suffer for it. More seriously: a guest who misreads allergen or dietary suitability faces a genuine health risk. A multilingual menu is not a courtesy — it's a matter of correct orders and safety.

1. Why isn't one language (or a one-off translation) enough?

Some businesses run the menu through a translation tool once, print it in English and call it done. Two problems follow: (1) when the menu changes, the translation doesn't — over time products go missing or become wrong; (2) general-purpose translation tools translate dish names word by word, whereas on a menu, expressions like “spicy”, “homemade” or portion sizes need their real equivalent in that language's food culture.

2. How many languages are enough?

There is no single right answer; it depends on your customer profile. In a touristic area, English alone may not be enough — guests who speak Russian, German, Arabic or Persian also want to read the menu in their own language. Servino supports 60 languages on the menu (including Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Kurdish, with right-to-left layout applied automatically), and the restaurant owner chooses which languages are shown to customers.

• Even on the free plan, your main language + 1 language of your choice are included
• On the Pro and Business plans, all 60 languages are available — enable any subset you like
• When you add or edit a product, its translations update automatically

3. Are the translations menu-aware?

Translations aren't produced from a generic dictionary; they take the restaurant/café/menu context into account — looking at how that expression is actually written on menus in the target language (e.g. “Künefe” isn't translated literally, it's written under its internationally established name). Common product and category names use prepared, reviewed translations; more specific product descriptions are translated when needed and stored permanently in the system.

4. Not just the menu — Q&A is multilingual too

If a customer reads the menu in their own language and then asks a question (e.g. “does this contain hazelnuts?”), the AI waiter answers in the same language. Menu + chat in the same language removes the moments when a waiter has to walk to a table just to translate.

5. Does setup involve extra work?

No. You choose which languages to keep enabled in Settings; translation happens automatically and is cached in the background (if the same product name was translated before anywhere in the system, it appears instantly). You don't need to hire a translator or paste texts by hand.