When an Edinburgh café became rather famous for being the place where a series of books were written which later became a worldwide phenomenon, the small café itself became a tourist stop. To increase efficiency, they translated their menu into Chinese. The many Chinese tourists spent much less time trying to decipher the English menu and their experience of the visit was improved.
Whilst not every restaurant, café or tea room can be considered a tourist attraction, time-stretched Chinese tourists with little command of English might be more likely to stop if a Chinese menu was available.
Not everyone can have a Taiwanese employee on hand to translate their menu like certain Edinburgh cafés do, so we thought we'd have a go at providing such a service.
I translated a few menus into Chinese prior to the London Olympics. Before that, I translated menus in China into English. So it's an old idea from my point of view, but I though about it again after seeing a small horde of Chinese tourists in a Cotswolds town systematically ignoring every café and tea room. I wondered if they would have ignored them all had some advertised themselves as having a Chinese menu.
So we thought we'd rekindle the old idea, but this time apply technology and put it online for any café to translate their own menu themselves. Now all one needs is a computer and a printer.
We do not intend to charge for this service, so it'll remain free so long as we can find free/cheap web hosting.
We hope it is useful.
Malcolm Butler
Jhang Jieming (章杰鳴)
Is it free?
Yes.
Who is this service designed for.
We have smaller cafés, tea rooms and restaurants in mind, those who cannot possibly justify the cost of a translator. But we are happy for anyone to use this service.
Can't I just put my menu into Google Translate?
Yes, but the quality of the translation can be very hit and miss. We do not recommend this option.
What is your cookie policy?
Cookies are small text files that your browser stores on your computer. We do not use cookies for any reason.
Why only British dishes?
Partially because we tend to be familiar with these dishes already. Partially because to open it up to everything would make the lists even more unwieldly than they already are. Also, Chinese tourists in this country will be more interested in the local cuisine, than the British take on Mexican food, for example.
How much does it cost?
Only the cost of the electricity to use the computer, the cost of access to the internet, the cost of ink and paper to print off the result. If you still have a surplus in your menu translation budget, why not laminate the menu for a more professional look? (Extravagant, I know!)
How much does it cost you?
Who? Us? It costs us the price of hosting a website and our time. We are not paying anyone
for the translation service as we are fluent Chinese speakers ourselves. Likewise, we have
developed this website ourselves. (Impressive, isn't it?)
We do not get any income from this service in any form.
Are the translations accurate?
Yes, as far as we can tell and we are fluent Chinese speakers with experience living inside China (in Shanghai and the Northeast city of Shenyang). We also have experience translating Chinese menus into English. The only caveat is that British dishes are seldom translated into Chinese and as such there are not many established translations. We attempt to give the customer an idea of the dish they are ordering as well as maintain the meaning of their English names. Where we suspect there might be scope for confusion, we have opted for a more descriptive translation, or described the dish in brackets after the name.
My dishes aren't in your lists! What do I do?
Firstly, just check the list of translations page to ensure that we do not have it listed.
Then, contact us and we'll add it as soon as we are satisfied with our translation.
In the meantime, translate as much as possible. We do recommend that you create your
menu even without all dishes included. A partially translated menu is better than no
translated menu. You can always come back and do another one if we add the missing
dish.
I charge extra for my BLT sandwiches than my other sandwiches, how does it account for that?
Simply add "Sandwich" in twice. On one entry, select "BLT" as the filling option, on the
other select all your other filling options and you can list them at different prices
accordingly.
Note that when only one filling option is selected, it won't present the list of choices,
rather it will alter the name of the dish to be, in this case, "BLT Sandwich".
The same can be used to list other similar dishes alongside one-another, such as a GF version of
a dish with its non-GF equivalent. It might flag up as a duplicate, but it won't stop you from
proceeding.
My Chinese mate thinks your translations are odd, what do you say to that?
Many British dishes do not have established translations and we have tried to use them
whenever they exist. But, as with much in the Chinese-speaking world, different translations
will be used in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and mainland China, notwithstanding the
Chinese-speaking communities in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and elsewhere. We have always
preferred the most widely understood.
However, we do not claim to be infallible, so please send your alternative translation to
us via our contact page and we shall look into it and perhaps change our translation.
(The original draft of this answer mis-spelt "infallible"!)