Headed to Italy for a food-centric vacation that includes mountains of pasta, braised meats, gelato and pizza? A new menu translation app has been launched to help tourists decode a pasta shape from a lamb dish.
Developed for Italophiles who love Italian cuisine, iOS app Translate A Menu — Italy Food Dictionary is a repository of 5,000 Italian food terms meant to help travelers place a restaurant order without fumbling for words or resorting to embarrassing hand gestures.
A “reverse search” will translate food terms from English into Italian to help diners order exactly what they’re craving.
And a notepad feature allows users to create a list of their favorite food ingredients and add photos and map locations of restaurants or markets. The app also works offline.
While a host of translation apps already exist, the app developers say theirs is different because translations will yield accurate culinary results rather than literal phrases.
For example, while the literal translation for osso bucco is “bone hole,” the app knows that the user is looking for the culinary term, which is braised veal shank.
Created for the six million tourists who visit Italy every year, a team of Italian writers took two years to build the culinary dictionary.
See on thestar.com.my
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