German to Hungarian Translation

This direction is used when a German document has to be submitted in Hungary. The typical applicant has completed a stage of education or a career step in Germany, Austria or Switzerland and is moving to Hungary or carrying out an official procedure there. The most decisive feature of this direction does not lie on the target side alone: in Hungary official translation is largely the monopoly of a state body (OFFI), and translations by private agencies may not be accepted by every authority.

Concrete examples make the direction clearer: the student who will study medicine or engineering in Hungary with a German diploma, the business submitting German company documents to its Hungarian subsidiary, the family taking the record of a child born in Germany to a Hungarian authority. The source carries the German administrative world; the target assesses it according to Hungarian administrative language and an approval system centred on OFFI.

An application in this direction usually begins with two questions: which Hungarian authority is the document going to, and does that authority require OFFI certification? The answer determines not only the linguistic side of the translation but the procedural side as well. German number and date formats are also adapted to Hungarian conventions: the decimal separator becomes a comma and the date is reordered as year-month-day; euro amounts are not converted, only their written form is adapted.

Technical issues specific to German into Hungarian

The order of names is reversed in this direction: the German given name and surname order is shown in the surname then given name order that Hungarian documents expect, and which element is the surname is confirmed against the passport. German umlauts and the letter ß are matched to the machine-readable spelling in the passport (ö→oe, ß→ss); Hungarian’s own long vowels are not confused with this conversion.

German’s long compound nouns are given in Hungarian by unpacking them. The company form GmbH is not automatically converted into the Hungarian Kft. structure; the original abbreviation is kept and an explanation added. The date format is carried from the German day-month-year order into the Hungarian year-month-day order.

The German 1–6 grading scale is not converted to the Hungarian scale; it is explained. The noun-phrase-based structure of German official style is rebuilt according to the agglutinative but more analytical sentence order of Hungarian. Seals and registration details on the document are preserved with their position.

Hungary attracts a significant share of the education applications in this direction; a large number of people admitted to medical and dentistry programmes taught in English or Hungarian submit German secondary school and university documents to a Hungarian authority. These files call for a detailed breakdown of courses and credits. The position of the seal and date of entry in the German document is preserved in the translation; although women’s names may be inflected in a Hungarian text, in an official document the name in the passport governs and no suffix is added at will.

Which documents call for this direction

• German or Austrian diploma, Zeugnis and transcript
• Birth, marriage and residence records
• Trade registry extracts and signature documents
• Pension and social security correspondence
• Powers of attorney and court documents

Because of the OFFI monopoly some authorities may accept only translations they have certified themselves, so asking the target institution whether it imposes that requirement before the translation begins avoids wasted time. Diploma files call for a detailed breakdown of courses.

In family files, showing the order of names according to Hungarian conventions and keeping it consistent across every document secures the matching of records. In commercial documents, institution names and registry numbers are given in their original form, with a reference to the record.

For applicants moving to Hungary the process is best thought of in two steps: first which authority the document is going to, and then whether that authority requires OFFI certification. German institutional abbreviations (i.V., i.A., for example) are not carried into the Hungarian text as they stand; they are unpacked and, where necessary, given in their original form in brackets. In powers of attorney the formula setting the limits of authority is preserved to the letter, because the scope of that authority directly determines the legal outcome. As for length, German compound nouns spread across several words in Hungarian, so the line plan is reworked in the narrow spaces of sealed documents.

The chain of approval

In Hungary official translation (hiteles fordítás) largely depends on OFFI; which authority accepts a private agency’s translation has to be clear from the outset. The German document is expected to carry an apostille.

To see the details of this monopoly and Hungary’s approval regime, look at the country page and the requirements for the document type. Tell us whether the target institution imposes the OFFI requirement, and what type of document is involved, before you send anything.

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