Hungarian translation agency

About Hungarian: key aspects in each translation

As the largest of the Finno-Ugric languages, Hungarian arose in history when Hungarians came to Europe from the East. Many (loan)words from Turkish and Iranian languages entered Hungarian in that period. As the wandering Hungarians put down roots in what is now Hungary, the language was further influenced by Slavic, Germanic, Latin and Italian. Today, English is the largest source for new words for Hungarian, as is the case for many languages.

Of the 14.5 million speakers, about 10 million live in Hungary. It is the only, or one of the official languages in Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Austria, Romania, Ukraine, Croatia and Slovakia. Hungarian uses the Latin alphabet. The oldest known text in this language dates back to the 12th century. Other characters are used to represent the sounds missing in the Latin alphabet. As a result, the complete Hungarian alphabet has 44 ‘letters’. Not entirely surprisingly, Hungarian is related to Finnish. Both languages have changed so much over time that mutual intelligibility is out of the question. A Finn understands as little of Hungarian as a Dutchman who does not speak Hungarian. If you want to translate a document from or into Hungarian, you have to consider the following elements: Know the Hungarian dialects.

Are you visiting Hungary or do you only need a Hungarian translation?

What do you want to achieve with your translation? Are you traveling to a Hungarian-speaking area or do you want to reach a Hungarian-speaking target group from the Netherlands? In short: what is your goal? As mentioned earlier on this page, the different dialects are not so far apart that they create incomprehensible situations. However, it is wise to take any dialect into account in your translation. This shows that you have left nothing to chance. A native speaker translator knows exactly where the bottlenecks may lie, not only when it comes to the translation itself but also the customs that Hungarians have in their language.

Choose a translator who knows both the language and the country. By having a native speaker translator translate your document, we guarantee you a translation that always serves its purpose. Whether it’s an official document or a text intended for reaching a specific target audience, you will benefit from the guarantee of getting it right by default.

What is the purpose of your translation? Do you want to translate certain medical documents or do you need a translation for your stay in Hungary? What is the purpose of the translation? Suppose you want to translate certain documents for a holiday to Hungary, consider in advance which documents are required and what standards they must meet. If official documents are involved, choose a sworn translation. Will you be using the translation for your website or a local publication? Assess your target audience in advance. Hungarian is based on the northeastern dialect. The differences between the existing dialects is not insurmountable; the most divergent dialect is spoken in Romanian Moldova by the Csángo population. Whether you need to take dialect into account depends on the purpose of your translation.