Talk to Mays in your own language: run the week in Turkish, Spanish or Vietnamese through ChatGPT or Claude

Plenty of café and restaurant owners think in one language and run their business in another. The schedule, the approvals and the numbers are in English, so every question goes through a translation step: a screenshot pasted into a translator, a bilingual manager asked to explain, or a guess.

When Mays is connected to ChatGPT or Claude, that step goes away. You ask in your own language, the AI reads Mays and answers in the same language, and nothing has to be copied from one window into another.

This post is part of our series Run your restaurant with your AI.

The situation

Say you own Harbor Lane Café, with two locations, Midtown and Riverside. You're most comfortable in Turkish. Your managers write the schedule in Mays, in English, and on Monday morning you want to know how the week looks.

Before: you open the schedule, take a screenshot, paste it into a chat window or a translator, ask what it says, then go back to Mays to make the change yourself. Every question is three or four windows.

Now: you type in Turkish, in the chat you already use.

Midtown'da bu haftanın programını göster. Cuma akşamı kapanışı kim yapıyor? (Show me this week's schedule at Midtown. Who's doing Friday evening's close?)

The AI finds Midtown among your locations, reads the week from Mays and answers in Turkish: who works which day, Friday's closing shift and who's on it. People appear as first name and last initial, like Jordan R., and times are on the location's own clock.

Then a change:

Maya pazar günü gelemiyor. Vardiyasını ekipten biri alabilsin diye paylaş. (Maya can't come in on Sunday. Share her shift so someone on the team can take it.)

The AI looks up Maya L.'s Sunday shift and asks Mays to offer it to the team for cover. Mays sends back a preview and changes nothing yet: which shift, who gets the push to claim it, and which teammates would go into overtime if they picked it up. The AI explains the preview in Turkish. You say evet (yes), and only then does Mays offer the shift. Maya keeps it until you approve someone's pickup.

It works the same way in other languages

The AI apps handle the language; Mays handles the data. A few more examples, each with an English gloss:

Each of those maps to a real part of Mays: the schedule and who's on, the approvals waiting for you, overtime risk for the workweek, open shifts, and sales and labor. The AI picks the right one from your question, in whatever language you ask it.

What actually happens behind the answer

In plain words:

1. You ask in your language. The AI app understands the question.
2. It asks Mays in Mays's terms. It looks up the location you named, then reads the schedule, the approvals or the numbers. Mays answers in English, with your data exactly as it is.
3. It answers you in your language. The AI translates the answer, keeping names, times and numbers as Mays gave them.
4. For a change, Mays sends a preview first. The AI shows it to you in your language and waits. Your yes is what makes the change.

The tools behind those steps, if you're curious: list_locations to find Midtown, get_schedule for the week, get_pending_approvals for requests, get_overtime_risk for overtime, get_open_shifts for open shifts, get_sales_and_labor for the numbers, and offer_open_shift for the cover request, which only works in two steps (a preview, then your confirmation).

What stays in English, and what doesn't

Be clear about which parts are translated:

• Mays's own screens are in English. The web app and the phone apps don't have Turkish, Vietnamese or Arabic screens. The AI translates in the chat; it doesn't change Mays.
• What Mays sends your team is in English. Invite texts and schedule notifications go out the way Mays always writes them.
• What the AI writes into Mays stays in the words it wrote. If you ask it to add a checklist item or a shift note in Turkish, Mays stores it in Turkish, and your team sees it in Turkish. Decide which language each thing should be in before you ask. A note for your Spanish-speaking line can be in Spanish; a note for everyone is usually best in the language everyone reads.
• The translation is the AI's, not Mays's. For a quick question that's fine. For anything you'll publish to your team, such as a policy, have someone who reads both languages check it.

Before you start

• Connect Mays to your AI app. mays.app/ai has the setup for ChatGPT and Claude, and Connecting Mays to your AI app explains what you approve and what the AI can see. Managers and admins can connect, each with their own Mays account.
• Reading works right away. The AI sees only your locations and only what your role can see in Mays. People appear as first name and last initial, with no phone numbers or emails.
• Changes need two switches. An admin turns on Allow AI apps to take actions under Settings → Connected AI apps → Organization, and you tick make changes when you connect. Not sure which is on? Ask, in any language, "What can this Mays connection do?"
• Pay is opt-in. Wages, labor cost and tips show only if you can see pay in Mays and ticked Include wages, labor cost and tips when you connected. Otherwise the AI says they're hidden; it never guesses them.

One language for you, one for Mays

You don't have to choose between running your café in the language you think in and keeping one clean set of data. Ask in Turkish, Spanish or Vietnamese; Mays keeps the schedule, the requests and the numbers exactly as they are, for everyone. If your kitchen and your office speak different languages, another post in the series shows a bilingual kitchen working from one schedule.

Try Mays free for 30 days, with no credit card, and connect it to the AI you already use.