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Scanning the menu

Scan any menu, in any language

You sit down, the card arrives, and it is in a language you do not read. Not partially: the whole thing, including the four words that would have told you which of these is the fish. So you order something recognisable, or you point at what the next table is having, or you photograph the card a section at a time and paste it into a translation app while the waiter waits.

A camera translation gives you words. It does not give you a menu. This page is about that difference, and about what turns any foreign-language menu on the table into something everyone sitting around it can read and order from at once.

What scanning a menu actually gives you

Point a phone at the card and TableTab reads it in one pass: the sections, the dishes, the prices, and the small print underneath them. What comes back is not a picture with subtitles over it. It is a menu, in your language, that you can scroll, search and tap.

That structure is the part that matters, and it is the part a camera overlay cannot produce. A translated photo is still a photo. You cannot tap a line of it to order, you cannot hand it to the four other people at the table, and the moment the camera moves the translation is gone. A scanned menu stays, and it stays for everyone.

AI menu translation is the easy half

Translating the words is close to solved. Google Lens does it, Google Translate does it, and a handful of small apps do it well enough for a holiday. If all you need is to learn that "zeebaars" is sea bass, you do not need TableTab, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

The half that is not solved is everything after the words. Five people need to read the same card, in as many languages as there are people, then agree on an order, then know what it cost each of them. That is not a translation problem. It is a shared-state problem that happens to begin with a translation, and it is why this is an app for a table rather than an app for a camera.

One menu, five languages, one order

Scan once and the menu belongs to the table rather than to the phone that scanned it. Everyone else joins with a link or a QR code and reads the same card in whatever language their own phone is set to. The Dutch speaker reads Dutch, the Japanese speaker reads Japanese, and both are looking at the same dish at the same price.

Because it is one menu and not five screenshots, the order builds itself as people tap. Nobody has to relay their choice through the one person who could read the card, and nobody finds out at the end that two of you ordered the same thing under two different names.

Where this stops being about convenience

Not reading the menu is an inconvenience right up until someone at the table has an allergy. Then it is the difference between an evening out and an emergency, and "I think this one is the chicken" is not good enough.

A scanned menu keeps each description attached to its dish, which is where the nuts, the shellfish and the dairy are actually named, and it keeps it there in a language the person with the allergy reads. That is worth having. It is not a substitute for telling the person carrying the plate, and no software should be sold to you as one.

Doing it at the table

  1. Point and scan

    One person opens TableTab and points their phone at the card. There is nothing to install and no account to create, for them or for anyone joining.

  2. Share the table

    A link or a QR code brings everyone else in. What they get is the card that was just scanned, rendered in their own language.

  3. Order from it together

    Everyone taps their own dishes on their own phone, and sees the rest of the table doing the same. The order builds while you are still reading.

  4. Split and settle up

    Equally, or by exactly what each person had. Everyone marks themselves paid in whatever way suits them.

Try it on the next menu you cannot read

Scan the card, share the link, and let everyone read the same menu in their own language. That is the whole restaurant experience in any language, free, in the browser, nothing to install.

Start a table free

See how splitting the bill works, once everyone has ordered, or go back to the homepage.