Multilingual Menu in Malta: How to Write a Menu Tourists Understand

Malta welcomed 4,022,310 inbound tourists in 2025, 12.9% more than in 2024, according to the National Statistics Office. The United Kingdom was the largest market, followed by Italy and Poland. On a busy evening in Valletta, Sliema or St Julian's, the person reading your menu is more likely to be a visitor than a local — and many of them read English as a second language. A menu that only makes sense to people who already know the dishes is losing orders at the table.

Keep the dish name, explain the dish

The most common mistake is translating the name of the dish word for word. The name is part of what you sell: stuffat tal-fenek, ħobż biż-żejt, pastizzi, ravjul, spaghetti alle vongole. Keep it. Then add one short line in plain English that says what is actually on the plate.

• Stuffat tal-fenek — rabbit slow-cooked in red wine, garlic and tomato, served with potatoes.
• Ħobż biż-żejt — Maltese sourdough rubbed with tomato paste, olive oil, tuna, capers and olives.
• Spaghetti alle vongole — spaghetti with clams, garlic, white wine and parsley.

A guest who has never heard of the dish now knows the main ingredient, how it is cooked and whether it suits them. That line is what turns "I'll just have the burger" into an order of the house speciality.

Mistakes that confuse tourists

• Literal translations that change the meaning — a machine translation of a local name can sound odd or even funny, and nobody orders a dish they're unsure about.
• Local shorthand with no explanation: "ftira", "bigilla", "qassatat" are obvious to a Maltese guest and a mystery to a first-time visitor.
• Different names for the same dish on the menu, the specials board and the bill.
• Allergens written only as numbers or symbols, with the legend on another page.
• A long PDF in several languages side by side — on a phone it becomes tiny text that has to be zoomed and dragged.

Which languages are worth it?

English is one of Malta's two official languages and the common language of almost every visitor, so an English menu written clearly comes first. Beyond that, on paper every extra language is a second menu you have to keep up to date: a price change or a new dish has to be made everywhere, or the versions drift apart. One well-written English menu beats four half-maintained printed translations.

A digital menu changes the maths: if the translations are generated from your original text and redone automatically whenever you edit a dish, an extra language no longer means extra upkeep. What still matters is the quality of the original — a clear English (or Maltese, or Italian) description translates well; a vague one translates into something vague in four languages.

If you add a second language, choose it from your own guests, not from a list. Italy is Malta's second-largest market, so for many venues Italian is the natural second choice — especially in areas popular with Italian visitors and residents.

Let guests see the dish

Words only go so far when the reader is tired, hungry and reading in a second language. A picture or a short video of the dish answers the questions a description can't: how big it is, what it looks like, whether it's what they had in mind. Research on online menus found that visual appeal influences purchase intention through the desire it creates for the food (Brewer & Sebby, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 2021) — a video doesn't need translating.

How menu.video handles languages

Here is exactly what menu.video does and doesn't do, so there are no surprises:

• You write the menu once, in your own language, and choose which other languages to offer guests: English, Italian, German, French and Spanish.
• Dish names, descriptions and categories are translated automatically. Well-known dish names (carbonara, tiramisù) and local specialities (ftira, lampuki pie) stay as they are, and only the descriptive words around them are translated — the same rule as above.
• When you change a dish, its translations are redone automatically, so the language versions can't drift apart.
• The guest picks the language with one tap at the top of the menu; by default the menu follows the language of their phone.
• Every dish can show its EU allergens, written out in full in the guest's chosen language, right under the video.
• You edit dishes and prices from your phone, and the change is live for the next guest who scans the QR code — no reprinting of any language version.

Automatic translation is a strong first draft, not a substitute for reading your menu: check the result in each language before the season starts, especially names of cuts, cheeses and local dishes. Want to see how a dish reads on a tourist's phone? Scroll the live demo — it takes a few seconds and no sign-up.