Restaurant terms in 12 languages: menu, comanda, POS, covers and false friends

Restaurant words don’t translate one to one, and some of the most common ones are false friends. In Italy, coperto is the cover charge, while coperti are the guests served. In France and Germany, a menu is a set meal; the full list of dishes is la carte or the Speisekarte. In Brazil, a comanda is the guest’s own tab, not the kitchen ticket it is in Spain and Italy. Below are everyday service terms in 12 languages, with the gaps left blank rather than guessed.

The terms come from our keyword research of 15 October 2026: the words owners and guests actually type into search engines in each market, checked against the vendor and trade sites that use them. We have no search volumes, so this shows what people say, not how often.

Why do restaurant terms matter across languages?

Short answer: your guests, your staff and your vendors may each use a different word for the same thing.

Kitchens are multilingual. In the US, 30% of restaurant and foodservice employees speak a language other than English at home, and 21% speak Spanish, according to the National Restaurant Association’s analysis of Census data (NRA, 2026). Guests travel too: about 1.52 billion international tourist arrivals were counted in 2025 (UN Tourism, 2026).

So the same evening can involve a Spanish-speaking cook reading a comanda, an Italian guest asking about the coperto, and a vendor in a German demo saying Bon. A shared word list saves a lot of “what did you mean?”.

What are the front-of-house terms in 12 languages?

Short answer: menu, waiter, bill, splitting the bill and calling a waiter, as owners and guests write them.

A dash means our research did not turn up a verified term. We’d rather leave a gap than print a guess.

What are the kitchen and systems terms?

Short answer: the order ticket, the till, ordering at the table, the QR code and the kiosk.

Two terms have no entry in other languages here because our research found them only in English. A KDS (kitchen display system) is a kitchen screen that shows tickets instead of printing them. 86 (eighty-six) is kitchen slang for a dish that has run out; we explain how to handle it in sold out mid-service.

What are the numbers owners track, by language?

Short answer: covers, table turnover and average check. Only some languages had verified terms.

We found no verified terms for these in Arabic, Turkish, Chinese or Korean, so those rows are left out. In India, owners use the English words.

Which restaurant words are false friends?

Short answer: words that look familiar but mean something else. These are the ones that cause real mix-ups.

If you work with a vendor or translator, send them this table first. It is cheaper than reprinting a menu.

How does language show up on WaiterPilot’s screens?

Short answer: the guest chats in their own language; your staff see the menu’s own words.

WaiterPilot is an AI waiter guests open from the QR code on their table, in the phone’s browser. Here is where language sits:

• The guest chat answers in the language the guest writes in. We have tested English, Arabic (several dialects) and Spanish, and it answers most other languages too.
• Arabic follows the restaurant’s own dialect if the owner picks one: Jordanian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Gulf (Emirati), Saudi or Modern Standard Arabic.
• The guest buttons are in English or Arabic. A guest from Turkey, Japan or Korea sees English buttons while chatting in their own language.
• Dish names show as written on your menu, with saved Arabic names where you have them.
• Notes such as “no onions” go on the kitchen ticket as the request was taken, not translated.

That last point matters for a multilingual kitchen. If a note arrives in a language nobody on shift reads, a server checks it at the table. More detail is on multilingual ordering.

How can you use these terms at your restaurant?

Casa Olivo is a fictional restaurant we use for examples (an example, not a customer).

Casa Olivo’s line has cooks who speak Spanish and Arabic at home, and its guests include many visitors from Italy and Japan. Before the summer, the manager built a one-page cheat sheet. Here is the method:

1. List the ten words your team says most on a busy night, such as ticket, fire, 86, table number, allergy, the check.
2. Ask each staff member for their own word and write it next to the English. Don’t take the word from a translation app if a colleague says it differently.
3. Add the false friends your guests bring. At Casa Olivo: coperto (Italian guests asking about a cover charge) and 割り勘 (Japanese groups asking to split).
4. Check what your bill really shows. With WaiterPilot, the guest’s bill shows only the lines you set, such as tax, a service charge or a gratuity. If you have no cover charge, a server can say so plainly.
5. Put the sheet at the pass and the host stand, not in a drawer.
6. Review it after each season, adding the words that caused a mix-up.

What to do next

Take the three tables above to your next pre-shift and ask your team which words they would change. For plain definitions in English of the terms vendors use, from QR menu to KDS and service charge, see the glossary. To see what a guest writing in their own language looks like on the staff board, try a sample order. If many of your guests don’t read your menu’s language, read serving tourists who don’t speak your language or compare a translated menu with a multilingual chat.