A new iPhone app to help travellers and food lovers translate Italian foods and restaurant menus into English has been released. The app, "Translate A Menu – Italy Food Dictionary," offers instant search of over 5000 Italian foods and dishes. A "reverse search" to translate a food from English into Italian is also a feature.
"Unlike other language translation apps or phrasebooks, this app tells you exactly what you are ordering from an Italian menu: the ingredients, how it is cooked and how to pronounce a dish," said Menu Translate's marketing manager, Roslyn Young.
"Travellers can now venture beyond tourist restaurants and confidently order dishes even where no English menu descriptions exist," she said. It's a tool that will be as indispensable as your map and guidebook, she added.
With the overseas traveller in mind, the app does not require Internet connection or account signup.
A unique feature of the app is its "notepad" to allow a list of foods to be created from search results, especially to help diners who often need to read a menu several times before ordering.
A photo and map location can be added to the notepad to create a food diary of the restaurant or food shopping experience. Notes can also be shared on social media or emailed. A comprehensive phrase list to cover all dining and shopping situations is included on the app.
The app is targeted at over 6 million tourists who visit Italy each year. A team of Italian writers spent almost two years compiling and translating the list of Italian dishes and food terms. The unique content and terms are not published anywhere else.
The app is currently for iPhone and will be available for iPad and Android in future. Spanish and French menu translation apps will be released by the end of this year.
The Italian Menu app is free to download and includes 15 free searches. An additional 15 searches can be purchased for USD$0.99c / GBP 0.69 or unlimited search for USD$8.99/ GBP 5.99.
Download at: http://tinyurl.com/translate-italian-food