Multilingual menu translations

At a glance

The German tourist, the American, the French couple: they open the menu and read it in their language, the one on their phone, with no action from you in that moment. Carteia natively speaks 8 languages — Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese — and translates the menu with AI using real culinary vocabulary. You check it, fix where needed, and the public menu updates by itself.

carteia.app

You'll find it under Dashboard → Translations.

How many languages you have

Plan	Digital menu languages	PDF export languages
Assaggio Assaggio	2	2
Osteria Osteria	2	2
Bistro Bistro	4	4
Ristorante Ristorante	8	8
Insegna Insegna	8	8
Insegna Plus Insegna Plus	8	8

Your source language (usually Italian) counts as one of these. So, for example, with Bistro you have Italian plus 3 other languages.

How AI translation works

1. 1

   Write the dishes in your source language (usually Italian).

2. 2

   Open Dashboard → Translations and pick the target language at the top.

3. 3

   Hit Translate: the AI translates names, descriptions and categories with restaurant vocabulary, not with a generic translator.

4. 4

   Review and fix by hand where needed (some traditional Italian dishes are best left in the original).

5. 5

   Save. The public menu is already updated.

It translates far more than just names

It doesn't stop at dishes and categories. When you launch a translation, the AI covers all the content of the restaurant:

• the venue name and description;
• the category names and descriptions;
• the title, description, ingredients and recommended pairing of every dish;
• the tasting notes of wines and beers and the beer ingredients;
• recipes and food-cost ingredients (name, preparation notes);
• the dish variants (sizes, cooking options, formats).

So the foreign guest finds everything translated, not half a menu.

The Translations page in detail

The page is organised by section — venue, categories, dishes, ingredients, recipes, pairings — so you find what you're after right away. At the top you pick the language you're working on. For each item you see the original alongside the translation, and you can:

• run automatic translation for one language or for all of them with the Translate button;
• fix any text by hand;
• use the filters to see only the items "to translate" (still missing) or "to review" (AI-translated), as well as "all".

Onboarding or continuous: what changes with your plan

Assaggio Assaggio and Osteria Osteria

AI translation runs once, during the initial menu creation. It's meant to get you started: translate the menu right after you build it. After that, edits don't re-trigger the AI by themselves — you adjust them by hand or move up to Bistro.

Bistro Bistro and above

Continuous, included translation: every time you change a text in the source language, the AI updates the other languages by itself, in the background. You stop thinking about it.

Manual "translate all" run

Costs Senza costo aggiuntivo per run on a full menu — but only once you've used up the runs included in your plan. While you're within the quota, it's free.

Tips for translations that look the part

• Traditional Italian terms (e.g. cacio e pepe, amatriciana, focaccia) → keep them in Italian in the name, translate the description. They sound better that way, and tourists search for them by that exact name.
• Allergens → already translated automatically, don't touch them.
• DOP/IGP marks → not translated (e.g. Prosciutto di Parma DOP).
• Prices and symbols → stay identical in every language.

What the guest sees

The guest's phone signals its language and the menu opens in that language. If the language isn't among your plan's, the guest sees your source language (usually Italian). Either way, there's a language selector at the top right of the menu to switch by hand.

Next steps

• Multilingual PDF export — print the menu in every language
• AI menu import from PDF — translations start right after the import
• Publishing
• Plans and credits