Translate items and categories

Translating a menu is two jobs: the dishes and the sections they sit in. Doing only the first produces English dish names under Spanish headings, which reads worse than not translating at all.

Translate an item

1. Open the item from All items.
2. Use the language tabs to select the language you are translating into.
3. Enter the title in that language — this is what creates the translated record.
4. Complete the translatable fields: subtitle, description, long description, and any others the menu type carries.
5. Select Update.
6. Repeat for each language.

The title is required. A language with an empty title gets no translated item, which is deliberate: it prevents empty records appearing across the site.

What you are not translating

Prices, allergens, images, the category assignment, the position in the menu and the publication status are shared. They do not appear in the translation panel because they are not per-language values.

If a translated menu shows a different price, that is a problem to investigate, not a translation to correct.

Translate the categories

Category names are separate records. Translate them wherever categories are managed for that language, and check the result on the public menu.

When an item is saved with translations, Fenómenus keeps the translated item pointing at the matching translated category where it can — but the name a guest reads still has to be written by someone.

Translate for a menu, not for a dictionary

A menu translation is a rewrite, not a substitution:

• Keep proper names. Txuletón, pintxo, jamón ibérico stay. Translating them destroys what they mean.
• Explain rather than translate where a term has no equivalent: Txuleta — aged beef chop, grilled over oak charcoal.
• Match the length. A description twice as long as the original breaks the layout the menu was designed around.
• Keep the register. If the source is plain and short, the translation is plain and short.
• Translate the sections too, in the same voice.

Work section by section

Translate one category completely — its name and all its items — then check it on the public menu before moving on. A half-translated section is visible to guests immediately, and the item status carries all languages at once, so you cannot hide one language while it is in progress.

If a menu is being translated over several days, keep the untranslated items on Draft until their translations exist.

Adding a dish to a translated menu

Every new dish is a dish in every language. Build it into the routine:

1. Create the item and complete it in the source language.
2. Add each translation in the same session.
3. Publish once, which publishes every language.

A dish added in one language and translated "later" is the standard way a multilingual menu drifts.

Verify

• [ ] Every published item exists in every published language.
• [ ] Category names are translated in every language.
• [ ] Prices and allergens are identical across languages.
• [ ] Dish order is the same in every language.
• [ ] No source-language text is left in a translated menu.
• [ ] Each language reads naturally on a phone, signed out.