Gourmet Journey in your Mother Tongue: Localize the Restaurant Chez Noir’s website

As a foodie, I treasure the joy that food brings me. I also have some friends who share the same appreciation of delicacy. Localizing a restaurant’s website allows us to share the joy of food with more people! We have chosen the restaurant Chez Noir, because: 1. This restaurant is not far from us. 2. Its delicious food convinced us. Guests can discover a modern, seafood-centric menu showcasing pristine ingredients sourced from throughout the Monterey Peninsula. Please feel free to watch the following video to have an overview of our project and know more about our motivations.

I am going to illustrate the entire localization process, the challenges that I have encountered, and my main take-aways from this project.

Challenges of Localizing a Restaurant Website

As an elevated restaurant, Chez Noir uses seasonal ingredients and regularly updates its menu. It is time-consuming to translate the menu every time when it is updated. We have to come up with a solution that can improve translation efficiency.
It is difficult for us to create a quote, as this is our first experience with this kind of project.

Localization Process

I worked with three teammates to run this project. The project was completed in two weeks.

Writing a proposal of this project, including project description, goals, technical tools, and potential challenges.
After receiving feedback, creating a quote and informing our client about our workflow.
Using Squarespace to reestablish Chez Noir’s website.
Creating a term base for the menu in Phrase.
Localize the entire website into Chinese simplified.

Here is what the website looks like:

This is the original Squarespace homepage.

This is the Chinese version of the homepage. You can easily find the language switcher on the top.

Our Thoughts about the Localization Process

A quote the basis of communication with the client. We can show our professionalism and offer reasonable pricing to convince the client.

A content management system (CMS) is an application that is used to manage content, allowing multiple contributors to create, edit and publish. Content in a CMS is typically stored in a database and displayed in a presentation layer based on a set of templates like a website. I like using CMS to establish websites, since it is beginner-friendly and allows for quick construction of fully contented websites. I have experience with WordPress and Drupal. This time we switched to Squarespace, which is better in my opinion. Compared to WordPress and Drupal, Squarespace is more user-friendly and I can arrange the content in a very flexible way. For example, when adding a text block, the range and spacing are clearly visible. Its straightforward design also allows for editing every single part of the website with ease.

The restaurant provides seafood and seasonal vegetables. I created a term base for frequently used ingredients. This saves time and effort in translating new menus even when they are regularly updated.

We used Weglot to localize the website. Weglot is a proxy solution that easily integrates with our website, enabling live translation without missing any strings. Furthermore, Squarespace supports Weglot very well, you can find a Weglot tutorial video in Squarespace.

Technical Steps of Creating the Term Base

Click “+” next to “Projects” on the left side. After setting source and target language, click “Create project” in the upper right corner.

Open the project and click “Create new” next to “Term bases”.

Open the term base, click “new” next to “Terms”, enter words in source and target languages, then click “Add”.

Technical Steps of Using Weglot

Click “Setting” in the lower left corner.

Click “Site Languages”, pull the page to the bottom, click “CONNECT”.

Log in to your Weglot account. Find Chez Noir in your project. Click “Visual Editor” on the left side, after clicking “Start editing”, you can translate the website live.