Menu translation: Chinese to English
Which Chinese, and which kitchen
Simplified and Traditional characters serve different markets, and the spoken language behind a menu affects the romanisation guests recognise. Beyond script, the regional cuisine matters more than the label: Sichuan, Cantonese, Hunan and Dongbei cooking share a written language and very little else. A dish name translated without knowing the kitchen produces English that misdescribes the plate.
Poetic names are a genuine category. 螞蟻上樹 is “ants climbing a tree” — a real dish of glass noodles with minced pork, and a name that needs the descriptor beside it rather than instead of it.
Heat is information, not decoration
Sichuan má (numbing, from Sichuan pepper) and là (chilli heat) are different sensations, and English collapses both into “spicy”. A guest who expects chilli and receives the tingling of Sichuan pepper has been misinformed by the menu, not surprised by the kitchen. Where it matters, name the sensation.
The allergens are in the sauces
Soy sauce carries wheat in most standard formulations. Peanut and sesame oil appear as finishing oils in dishes that never mention them. Oyster sauce and shrimp paste bring molluscs and crustaceans into vegetable dishes. Doubanjiang is soy and wheat based.
Every one of these is invisible in the dish name in either language, which is precisely why allergen data belongs on the item as structured tags rather than in prose a filter cannot read.
How Intermenu handles Chinese → English
Intermenu treats every menu entity as a structured record — name, description, ingredients, allergen tags, diet tags — so translation happens per field rather than across a wall of text. Allergen and diet data are tags, not sentences, which is why they keep working when the menu renders in English.
Machine translation produces the first draft; a human reviews before a locale is published, and the review state is recorded per translation.