In October 2008, Restolingua joined the club of AEHT professional partners. This company has the sole distribution and development rights to a system which creates, translates and prints professional menus online. The vast Restolingua database, containing more than 22,000 terms in eight languages (including German, English, American, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Japanese and soon Chinese) allows the user to create and translate any menu simply by defining the composition of each dish in one of the system’s languages.
Moreover, the menus can be published not only in several languages but also using several national currencies.
Once translated the menus are saved onto the Restolingua server, enabling them to be accessed and printed out from any computer in the world which has an Internet connection.
The site is intended not only for restaurant professionals across the world but also for hotel schools who could thus introduce students to a tool that would be most useful in their future professional careers.
At the Annual Conference in Kuressaare, the AEHT signed a cooperation agreement with the Managing Director of Restolingua, which may be summarised as follows:
1. (Free) use and rates
The cost of accessing the system and the Restolingua dictionary will be a fixed amount of €500 excluding VAT per school per year for AEHT member schools, that is to say 5 EUR excluding VAT for an average of 100 users (as against €365 excluding VAT for ‘ordinary’ subscribers and €300 excluding VAT for subscribers ‘recommended’ by AEHT member schools). However to cover this cost the school may identify (local, national or international) companies willing to offer their sponsorship. Various sponsorship formulae are available and are specified under the ‘sponsors’ section of the Restolingua site (see Media kit on www.restolingua.com). For example the logo of the sponsor(s) would appear on the screen each time a student or a teacher at the school in question logs on.
2. Distribution
The yearly subscription fees to access the system have to be paid in advance and by credit card or any other form of payment offered by the payment system available on the Restolingua web site as from the end of 2008. The special codes allocated to each AEHT member school make it possible to grant a special discount to customers canvassed by these schools and to calculate the commissions due to these AEHT member schools.
2.1. Commissions
For each subscriber both the school and the AEHT will be paid a commission of 15% of the net subscription paid, that is to say 45 EUR. Commissions are payable after full payment of the subscription fees by the customer and per quarter. In the case of large customers (e.g. hotel groups) benefiting from special discounts through particular written agreements, commissions will be lowered proportionally.
3. Content and translation
Restolingua is currently seeking schools prepared to coordinate the work of translating these expressions into all the languages of AEHT member countries which are not yet part of the database, and to add expressions relating to their specialities and to regional dishes and ingredients. Schools will receive €0.5 for each expression translated. This rate includes a payment for internal coordination as well as for the translation itself. The translation work will only start after sufficient sponsor funds have been acquired. Furthermore, 20% commission on sponsoring will be paid to the coordinating school for setting up a ‘language centre’ and for paying their translation team.
4. Coordination
The AEHT will name an international coordinator for the Restolingua project.
Each AEHT member country will have to name a coordinator for both the commercial activity and the ‘content and translation’ activity.
Within Restolingua, Mrs Arike Vermazen (
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) will be the project coordinator.
All communication will be in English.
5. Confidentiality clause and copyright
The system and the product developed will remain the exclusive property of Restolingua or its respective copyright or intellectual property holders (suppliers of the technology used for example).
Member schools will be authorized to use information included in the system only for vocational training purposes. Member schools are requested to warn their students and teachers that anyone revealing their access code or any content to a third party will be liable to prosecution.
6. Termination of the agreement
The agreement came into effect on the date of signature, (October 16th, 2008) for a period of 4 years and it shall terminate on October 15th, 2012. If either party wishes to terminate the agreement before this date, 60 days prior notice in writing is required.
