Google Translate's camera mode is your baseline. Open the app, point your phone at the menu, and it renders a live translation over the top. It's imperfect and occasionally hilarious, but it gets you to 80% comprehension in under a minute and it works offline if you've downloaded the language pack.

The Better Tool for Structured Text

For menus that are printed clearly in a modern typeface, DeepL is more accurate than Google Translate and handles culinary vocabulary better. Screenshot the menu, upload it to DeepL, and you get a cleaner translation. This matters in a restaurant where the description is actually telling you something important, which is most of the time in France and most of Spain.

The camera mode is for the handwritten blackboard at a Portuguese tasca. DeepL is for the multi-page French menu where the distinction between the amuse-bouche and the entrée actually matters.

Understanding how a menu is organised removes half the confusion before you've read a single word.

France distinguishes between the à la carte menu and the set menu (formule or menu). The formule is almost always better value and often the better food because the kitchen runs it efficiently. The words entrée, plat, and dessert are starter, main, and pudding, not entry and main as English speakers sometimes assume. The prix fixe means a fixed price for a set number of courses.

Italy runs a sequence: antipasto (starter), primo (first course, pasta or risotto), secondo (main, usually meat or fish), contorno (side dish, ordered separately), and dolce (dessert). Ordering just a primo is acceptable. Ordering a secondo without a primo is fine. Ordering a secondo and expecting a side dish to come with it is a misunderstanding that will leave your plate looking sparse. Order the contorno explicitly.

Germany presents regional dishes that translate badly and sometimes don't translate at all. Sauerbraten, Maultaschen, Himmel und Äd: these are specific regional dishes with no English equivalent. Google Translate will often tell you "heavens and earth" rather than "black pudding and mashed potato with apple," which is what Himmel und Äd actually is. If a dish appears to be untranslatable, the correct move is to ask or to order it and find out. This almost never goes badly wrong.

Spain often offers a menú del día at lunchtime: a two or three course set meal with bread and sometimes a drink included. This is not on the evening menu. It appears at the front of the menu at lunch only, and it's consistently the best value meal available in Spanish cities.

When You Guess Wrong and It Arrives

You order something and it arrives as a surprise. This happens to everyone. The correct response is to eat it with an open mind, because you might have accidentally ordered something excellent. If it's genuinely not what you wanted and the language barrier makes explanation difficult, a polite gesture towards the menu and a shrug usually communicates "I think I made a mistake" well enough. Most restaurant staff find this more charming than distressing.

The only thing worth avoiding is making a fuss about it. The wrong dish that arrives gracefully is a story. The confrontation about it is just an uncomfortable meal.