Menu translation: English to German
Length changes the layout
German runs meaningfully longer than English — commonly a third again, sometimes more once compounds form. Menu copy that fits a phone in English wraps awkwardly in German, and dish names that sat on one line begin to break in the middle of a compound.
This is a design constraint, not a translation one. Check the German menu at phone width before publishing; a translation that is linguistically correct and visually broken still costs orders.
Sie, and how the menu addresses a guest
German distinguishes formal and informal address, and the choice is a brand decision. Most restaurant contexts use the formal Sie; a casual or youth-oriented concept may deliberately use du. What matters is that the menu picks one and holds it — mixed address reads as an error rather than a style.
Allergen and additive declaration
Germany applies EU Regulation 1169/2011 for the fourteen allergens, and German practice additionally footnotes additives — colourings, preservatives, phosphates, sweeteners — by number. Guests are used to seeing both, and their absence is noticeable.
Handle these as structured data per item rather than as translated prose, so the same declarations render correctly in every language you publish.
How Intermenu handles English → German
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 German.
Machine translation produces the first draft; a human reviews before a locale is published, and the review state is recorded per translation.