Our free phrase card for travelling vegetarians will help ensure a meat-free dinner by cutting through linguistic problems. And we have not forgotten vegans either!
We are launching the card today in celebration of World Vegetarian Day. It translates a simple phrase for both vegetarians and vegans to use in restaurants or when staying in guesthouses or with a family. Simply show your host the card on your phone or tablet – or print it out and pack a copy.
Vegetarian translation
Our experience is that simply saying “I am vegetarian” does not always do the trick. Perceptions of this meaning can vary from person to person, let alone from country to country or culture to culture. So we have explained:
I am a vegetarian. I do not eat fish, seafood, poultry or any meat.
I am a vegan. I do not eat fish, seafood, poultry, meat or any animal products including eggs, dairy products and honey.
We have called upon professional translators to ensure that the phrases will be clearly understood in their native language, unlike some amateur or “machine” translations available online.
Vegetarian in Spanish, Vegetarian in Chinese…
We have selected nine languages for our vegetarian translation. So you can say you’re a vegetarian in Spanish, Chinese, French, Arabic, German, Polish, Italian, Japanese and Portuguese. These languages combined have some 3 billion first language speakers. Add in the use of English as a lingua franca in India (population 1.2 billion), and the card covers a large proportion of the world’s population. Of course, there are many, many languages spoken by many millions of people across the globe. If there is a language you would like to see added, why not leave us a comment?
Of course, this phrase card is just a starting point. There is lots of other good advice online about traveling as a vegetarian or vegan including Five Tips for Vegan Travel and How to survive as a travelling vegetarian. The website Happy Cow is also an excellent place to research restaurants in your destination.
How to get our Vegan and Vegetarian multilingual card
The card comes in a range of formats – all of them free to download.
Download PDF
Download PDFDownload to read or print with Acrobat Reader.
Vegetarian multilingual card PDF
Image
ImageView the Vegetarian multilingual card as a graphic, or download / save it to your phone or tablet.
Vegetarian multilingual card (optimised for iPhone 4S & below)
Vegetarian multilingual card (optimised for iPhone 5)
Vegetarian multilingual card (optimised for iPad)
Blogs and websites
Blogs and websitesShare our phrase card on your site. To display a picture of the card and link back to these downloads, just copy and paste this html into your site:
Of course, you can also share the card on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ using the buttons below.
I hope you find find the phrase card useful. Happy eating!
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Everything is very open with a precise description of the issues.
It was definitely informative. Your website is extremely helpful.
Thank you for sharing!
I am vegan and traveling to Cambodia soon. Would it be possible to find a translation for Khmer? Thank you!
@Kate: that’s a tricky one… but we are working on coming up with something! You may find the French phrase is of some use, but we will try for the Khmer too
This is wonderful thank you. Wish I would have come across this before my Spain Holiday, oh well hopefully I can use this next summer so then I wont have to say “no moo, or cluck cluck” 🙂
I am veg. food lover & I like Cake, Donuts, Pizza & Ice-cream so i am visiting regularly pizza shops & restaurants. I like to try new veg dishesh so I always try to visit new veg. restaurants.
Awesome, thanks!
All 3 languages I need this year are on there – was particularly worried about Arabic, now that’s all sorted 🙂
Wonderful buddies., Im a vegetarian too. Clearer with my sir name. Good luck.
Could you include Dutch for the next one?
Vegetarian:
Ik ben een vegetariër. Ik eet geen vis, zeevruchten, gevogelte of vlees.
Vegan:
Ik ben een veganist. Ik eet geen vis, zeevruchten, gevogelte, vlees, en geen enkele dierlijke producten, waaronder eieren, zuivel en honing.
Thanks, Judith. We will include when we make an expanded update.
I wonder what other languages people would like to see added?
Good job. An idea for improvement:
All vegetarian text at one end and all vegan text at another end so you can fold the page and show only what is relevant. Right now you point at one and waiter can read one next to it – a recipe for disaster! Thanks.