A tourist will order from the language they can read. If that version is a photographed PDF from two summers ago, or a staff member translating "contains barley" from memory, you have two menus and only one of them is maintained.
Quiteful translates section names, dish copy and allergen wording with DeepL, then holds the result until someone reviews it. The English recipe stays the source of truth.
Why a spreadsheet in French goes stale
The usual workaround is a second document: the chef's card in English, a translated card in Google Docs, and a hope that they move together. They do not. A supplier swaps the stock, the English allergen flags change, and the French PDF still says the old thing. Guests using that PDF are not being difficult. They are reading the only version they were given.
The same failure shows up at hotels and attractions that host many outlets. A destination menu is only useful in another language if every outlet on it is current. That is why multi-menu pages keep language switching next to allergen filters, rather than shipping a translated file per kiosk.
What DeepL is doing in the admin
From the menu translations screen you pick a target language. Quiteful queues the job and stores the draft against that menu. It is machine translation of the copy you already keep on the recipe — names, descriptions, allergen wording — not a new menu someone has to rebuild by hand.
Then you read it. Allergen wording is safety-critical. A fluent sentence that softens "contains milk" or muddles "may contain" with "contains" is worse than no translation. Check the draft, correct the dishes that need a human ear, and publish when it is fit for a guest. Until you publish, guests are not guessing from a first pass.
One edit, then translate again
When the English recipe changes, you do not maintain a parallel French menu in a folder. You update the source and run translation again. Menu updates still flow from that recipe: prices, availability and allergen flags on the source record are what the live menu is built from.
Custom allergens you have added beyond the regulated 14 — coriander, MSG, pea protein — need the same care. A badge with no translated name is a private joke. The guest needs the word in the language they are browsing.
What you should not outsource to a model
DeepL will not know your kitchen. It will not know that the fryer is shared, that "gluten-free" on your menu means a specific process, or that a dish name is a place name you want left alone. Those judgements stay with the venue. The same honesty applies to gluten-free claims: a translated badge that overpromises is still an overpromise.
Staff who need to read a guest's allergies, rather than a translated menu, have a different tool. Food Passport puts the guest's own list into the language the team speaks.
A practical next step
Translate the highest-traffic menu first — usually the one behind the table QR code — and review allergen lines before descriptions. Publish that language, then add the next. Do not launch five languages on a Friday with nobody rostered to read them.
See menu translations in Quiteful, or read how custom allergens sit alongside the regulated 14 on the same menu.