Using DTP for Restaurant Menus

April 11, 2014 |

ppx3movehandleSoutheast Asia is certainly the home of exoticism; with enormous, highly populated cities surrounded by tropical forests, and further away, paradisiacal beaches. While Thailand is popular in its own right, Vietnam offers Western tourists respite in its use of a Latin script for the Vietnamese language. Pollution and heat provide a grimy coating to the innumerable trees that line the streets of Hanoi, which intersperse with buildings of every kind: graying monuments, pagodas, temples… Vendors yelling to sell their wares and motorbikes honking their horns wildly… yet this ancient capital city bears a certain tranquility. Perhaps it’s the world famous food platters sold on the streets and in restaurants that enrapture people’s attention with pleasuring smells, and enticing names. Whether the menu is for fast food and placarded on the wall or placed in the hands of eager clients, menus are a prime example of desktop publishing work.

Imagine gazing at the menu of an upper-scale Vietnamese restaurant. The “bánh ph” (rice noodles) in this facility might be sautéed with beef and contain more spices than normal. Obviously, desktop publishing translation prevents menu mistakes from occurring. These mistakes, the mockery of linguistics blogs, tend to feature Asian restaurant menus translating the characters into completely unrelated phrases. However, no restaurant can be too sure of what they get from Google Translate. For example, “Gỏi Cuốn”(salad rolls) aka “spring rolls”, one of the most famous Vietnamese dishes, is translated into “roll call” on Google Translate! The online application only translates “Gỏi” into “salad” when the word is alone, and attempting to enter “Cuốn” by itself won’t solve anything either. If Google cannot handle this word, what about the millions of new recipes waiting to be invented… In French, the language of cuisine, “mijotement de poireaux dans une sauce de gingembre” is just one made-up example that completely fails the test. “Mijotement” (a simmering) isn’t even in the all-knowing Google’s vocabulary!

There is one large portion of desktop publishing still unmentioned. In terms of menus, this would be the formatting and layout. It is clear restaurants have their own devices and gimmicks: studies of where the eyes of clients wander when looking at the menu, the use of appetizing pictures, boxes, colorful and bolded fonts, etc. Creating these and maybe less devious elements, such as incorporating the logo, and using border themes are very time intensive tasks. The use of desktop translation services prevents potentially repeating all these tasks once a translation has been ordered. On top of that, restaurant menus change all the time, adding the new recipes and removing the flops. The National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) publishes rankings for top trends in restaurant orders for a given year. 2014 places an emphasis on locally grown foods, and on specific foods, such as quinoa and buckwheat. While the trend is towards more sustainable comestibles, consumer opinion changes all the time. Not to mention that ethnic variety is usually what changes the most (Hard to think that America will ever give up the hamburger or the milkshake).

Wars in the mid-twentieth century pushed many Vietnamese to emigrate and by 1961, the United States had its first Vietnamese Restaurant, according to newspaper records. Whether modern day zones of conflict, such as the Crimean region of Ukraine, spark a surge of Eastern European dining, only time will tell. However, the conclusion is Desktop Publishing brings restaurants the latest translations in the food industry, with all the graphic design preserved, within a very short timeframe. And all customers find relief in knowing what’s in their food. FYI, avoid “mực sống” meaning “live cuttlefish” in Vietnamese. It’s a real dish!

For an overview of our translation expertise, visit our desktop publishing service page.

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Category: Business Translation

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