For Professional Dopes like Joey Vento, just mention the subject of non-English-speaking help in the kitchens of America, and prepare for fireworks coming out of the neck and steam coming out of the ears. (You could steam a dumpling with it!) But the fact of the matter is, according to GigaChef.com, the restaurant industry employs 13.1 million people, of
which approximately 17% are Hispanic, and many of those, as anyone who’s ever worked in the industry will tell you, tote varying degrees of broken/barely existing English to get through their days. It’s a problem that touches any number of cross-cultural flashpoints, so kudos to GigaChef for approaching the problem in a grown-up way that says, “Yes. The problem exists. And it’s going to be a long time before it’s ever rectified, so let’s pour some knowledge and understanding on it.” Their answer? The Kitchen Spanish dictionary:

The Kitchen Spanish Talking Dictionary on GigaChef.com will help improve communication and increase productivity in the kitchen. Available online in the Library section of the website, the dictionary is free to users.

Often, Spanish-speaking employees are given a demonstration of their tasks and occasionally, bi-lingual employees act as interpreters. This tool will allow both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking staff to communicate more easily with each other. By simultaneously seeing and hearing industry words in Spanish and English, language learners will feel more confident pronouncing words that are new to them. [...]
The dictionary is organized by categories such as cooking terms, herbs and spices, job titles, and kitchen equipment, and also alphabetically so users can select the way that they want to search words.

To log onto the GigaChef site at all, you must register. But by the by, this is one of the best in-the-biz sites we’ve seen thus far. Check it out, and let the healing/learning begin.