Election law in Hungary

Hungary’s election law has been a major headline in non-Hungarian publications this year, beginning with political commentary leading up to the April 6 election, and now with analysis of what may have contributed to the results.

The Economist offers a decent summary of the controversies and results here. You can read the Reuters article here.

In brief, the incumbent (and now re-elected) PM Viktor Orbán, in cooperation with the Hungarian government, has introduced major changes to the Hungarian Constitution over the last four years, including changes to the electoral system and voter zoning. These last changes, which reduced the overall number of seats in Parliament and instituted a one-round election process (cut down from two rounds), have been called gerrymandering by a large opposition.

The opposition continues to fight the changes in the electoral system and the results of the April 6 election. Others are just happy that the far-right (racist) party Jobbik only managed to place third in terms of seats in Parliament, with the Socialist party sneaking past for second place.

Since I’m not a Hungarian citizen, nor am I Hungarian by birth or blood, it’s not my place to comment on these facts. I have Hungarian friends who are furious about the results, and I have Hungarian friends who are indifferent or satisfied with the results.

The important thing is to note the research that shows that Orbán likely wouldn’t have won the election using the previous arrangement of the election system—even though the new system is similar to one suggested by international bodies that felt the old system wasn’t sufficiently transparent. Monitors of the election considered it fairly conducted, but voiced reservations about the fairness in light of the legal changes that took place.

What legal/political events have occurred in your source-language country lately? How have changes in law affected it? Did you know about this major Hungarian event?

 

English equivalents of Hungarian business entities

I found a couple excellent resources for those interested in the various Hungarian business entities and how they map to English/American equivalents. There is a short version here, and a longer (very well written) PDF created by a Hungarian law firm here.

I am a big fan of these types of resources—they’re neither “parallel documents” nor are they dictionaries. Written for non-translators by experts in the field, these guides explain the basics of establishing a business in Hungary using field-specific terminology (but not jargon). You learn a little more than what a dictionary would tell you, without having to hunt through too many pages of legal-type texts. Reading guides like this can bring you closer to your end clients, too—they are written by lawyers for businessmen, both of whom might need your services!

Here are the basic acronyms decoded:

Kft. = limited liability company

Zrt. = private company limited by shares

Bt. = limited partnership

Just remember that legal systems do not map perfectly across borders. It’s better to use the original (source) acronyms and offer an explanation once or twice of what they mean in roughly the target legal system’s terms. You don’t want to mislead the reader.

What do you read when you need to get a better grasp on an acronym or big-picture term? How do you handle foreign entity names in your target text?

American idioms resource

Sometimes when I’m up to my eyeballs in the source language, I have a hard time finding just the right target phrase. Especially if I’m distracted by a particularly pretty, amusing, or oddball idiom that doesn’t exist in English. (A flea shouldn’t jump just because the elephant moves its leg? Say what?)

Behold! Yet another useful internet resource to the rescue: http://www.americanidioms.net/. Type in the general idea you’re trying to capture, and it often pulls up a couple good suggestions to at least put you back on the right track. Enjoy!

And, just because I like them, a short list of some of my favorite distracting foreign idiomatic expressions:

• Az Kenyában! Literally, that’s in Kenya. Better English equivalent: might as well be in Timbuktu!

• Se füle, se farka. Neither ear nor tail. Clear as mud.

• Farkaséhes vagyok. I’m wolfhungry. I could eat a horse. (And, in French: avoir un faim de loup)

• La fin des haricots. The end of the beans. The last straw.

• Boire comme un trou. To drink like a hole. To drink like a fish, be a bottomless pit.

• Ne pas vendre la peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tué. Don’t sell the hide before you’ve killed the bear. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. (The bear image is so much scarier!)

Feel free to chime in with your favorite idioms below! Really, you’ll make my day with a good one.

Hungarian poetry: Endre Ady

Endre Ady is one of Hungary’s best lyric poets. He was born in modern-day Romania in 1877, trained as a lawyer, and became a journalist. Through his poetry, Ady moved Hungarian literature beyond Sándor Petőfi’s celebrated contributions. Cynical, critical, and sometimes almost narcissistic, his poems protest the often-violent changes that were taking place in Austro-Hungary during his lifetime. They explore the nature of the Hungarian people, mysticism and religion, and love. Later in life, he developed a strong sense of pacifism quite unique among his contemporaries. Ady died in Budapest in 1919.

The following poem comes from Ady Endre: Válogatott Versek (Osiris Diákkönyvtár, 2006). Translation is my own.

Tavasz-világ

Tavasz-világ, havas világ, fehér világ
Világítsd meg, tavaszítsd meg
Ezt a szörnyü Tragédiát
S takard el már a vért virággal.

(1917. március)

Spring-light

Spring-light, snowy light, white light
Bring light, bring spring
To this horrible Tragedy
And mask the blood with flowers.

(March 1917)

Buying Hungarian books in North America

A reader asked me recently about locating Hungarian-language books outside of Hungary. I don’t know about other continents, but in North America, it sure is difficult. Up until now, I’ve been searching good old Amazon and hoping for the best. However, I may have found a slightly more reliable source: Ten Thousand Steps, a New York City-based Hungarian bookstore. Drukkoljük! (Cross our fingers!)

Though many older items seem to be out of stock, they get new titles in all the time. Így szerettek ôk – Magyar irodalmi szere, for instance. (A book on love in Hungarian literature, a topic that fascinates me after getting acquainted with the national poetry.)

Check out the store’s Facebook page for how and when to visit in person, or order your items online! For reasonable costs and shipping fees! Amazing!

If they don’t have what you’re looking for, here are a couple more North American bookstores specializing in Hungarian reading material:

• Pannonia Bookstore in Toronto, Ontario

• Hunnia Books in Waukegan, Illinois

• Csimpilimpi in Austin, Texas (children’s books only)

Do you have a favorite resource for Hungarian literature/ dictionaries/DVDs in the US or Canada? They’re hard to find—please share your links!

Levels of formality in translation

This week, I’m doing something that’s not highly recommended for a translator: working into my two source languages. Please, do not do this for a client, ever. If you weren’t born into a language, you simply will not notice the “non-nativisms” in your translation, no matter how strong your grasp of vocabulary, syntax, grammar, etc. Not good.

My no-no project is a personal one, namely, my business website. Making my website trilingual is one of my goals for 2013. I debated with myself a long while. On the one hand, if my text ends up looking a little funny to a French or Hungarian potential client, it might turn them off my services. Plus, this is something all translators try to dissuade clients from doing. I should be setting a better example, probably. However, I always try to address emails and other communication to my clients in their native language. They’ll find out fairly quickly that, though I am fluent in French/Hungarian, I do make minor mistakes in my writing (most of which native speakers make, too! Think about it: how many times have you seen an anglophone non-language professional misuse “their” or “there,” or incorrectly insert an apostrophe in “it’s purpose is to…”? Plenty, I’m sure!). Paying for a professionally error-free translation won’t fool anyone for long.

So, I decided that I would translate my copy myself. It’s good practice for my own writing skills, and it creates an honest showcase of my grasp of my working languages. I’ll have some native speakers read through my work for me just to double-check. And later on, I can hire a couple translators I know to really do some deep revision, if necessary.

Right now, I’m struggling with a language decision even a professional English-to-Hungarian translator would stumble across: Hungarian websites have slightly different levels of formality than do English ones. French sites are written with their own variation, too. For instance, when addressing the reader, should I use the formal “Ön/Vous”? Or the slightly less formal but still respectful “Maga”? I need to strike a good balance between writing copy that any target reader will be comfortable with, and maintaining my own personality and voice to attract like-minded clients. Here’s one (easier) example:

• Rather than say “Contact me,” I want to use the English “get in touch.” It’s pretty informal language, but it’s normal usage in US business, as formality is lately viewed as outdated.

• In French, I’ve chosen: “Prenez contact,” with the more respectful “vous” conjugation. I know “tu” is becoming more popular, but I don’t think it can hurt to be a little extra polite.

• In Hungarian: “Elérhetőség,” which just means how [you] can reach [me]. It’s far more common on Hungarian sites to use this phrase, rather than an imperative; commands are avoided whenever possible (even recipes say, “let’s mix these ingredients together,” rather than just “mix them together”!).

For more difficult phrases, I’ve been scouring the search engines for parallel texts—other translators’ websites. There are surprisingly few in Hungarian… Maybe I just don’t know what keywords Hungarians are using when they search for a translation pro. The ones I do find have slightly different page layouts than anglophone translators’ sites do, too. Cultural differences run deep!

Have you run into this conundrum before in your translations? When adjusting your text, do you err on the side of the source culture, or the target culture?

Word of the day: Milliard

Today’s word: milliard (Fr) and milliárd (Hu).

In English, it means “billion.”

Sources agree that this term appeared in Middle French as an adaptation of the term “million.” The oldest attestations of use date to the early 16th century.

“Billion” belongs to two different number-naming systems, the long scale and the short scale.  Be careful when you see “billion” in a non-English text—this word can mean two very different numbers! In the short-scale system (with which Americans are most familiar), “billion” equals 1,000,000,000. The prefix bi- here refers to the multiplication of one thousand by one thousand squared (1,000 x 1,000^2). In the long-scale system (used by the French and Hungarians), the prefix bi- refers to the exponent of one million (1,000,000^2), producing the number 1,000,000,000,000.

Rovás, or Ye Olde Hungarian Runes

Another major theme at the recent NCATA regional conference was maintaining your passion for language. Adopting an appreciation for life-long learning seemed to help many of the pros. In fact, the more seasoned the translator or interpreter, the more excited he or she was discussing dialect and other details. Sharing their language treasures only intensified their excitement.

I enjoy this sort of collaboration. Not many people know about my central European working language. Of it, yes, but specifics, no. I’m happy to act as an unofficial cultural ambassador; to me, it’s a natural corollary to the job of translator. And, in reading up on your working culture’s background, you never know what you’ll uncover! Rovás, an original Hungarian writing system, is one of my more exciting recent finds.

Hungarian is an old language that adopts change slowly. I don’t always expect to find much language-related variation far back in the people’s history. Rovás was largely replaced by Latin orthography throughout the Hungarian territory by the 15th century, though Latin had been the official written alphabet since the coronation of Saint Stephen in 1000. The term rovás literally translates to “nick” or “score.” Hungarians in the 10th century and earlier carved a combination of lines and simple curves into sticks to form their alphabet and written literature. There are several forms of rovás from different time periods; the Székely form persisted the longest and experienced a widespread revival in popularity in the 19th century.

The simple line-letters were often combined in the word they made up (perhaps to save space?). Some ligatures have left older rovás writing almost unintelligible. Try your hand at deciphering the runes in the sample here. Remember, text often flowed first right-to-left, then left-to-right as it dropped to a new line. Once you figure out the letters, send a note to someone in rovásírás (rovás writing). And for more information, this Hungarian-language site houses a treasure trove of rovás history. Good luck, and enjoy!

Update: Dr. Gábor Hosszú, a rovás expert, wrote to correct the date cited for Latin script replacing rovás. He has written an English-language book on the topic, available here.

Word of the day: Clenche

Today’s word: clenche (Fr) and kilincs (Hu).

In English, it means “latch” (like on a door).

In France, this word appeared circa 1200 in the francique of the north/northeastern regions, most likely influenced by onomatopoeic language from Germany and the Netherlands. It worked its way into Hungarian sometime in the same century via political connections to the French ruling family as part of a small set of loan words denoted as “újlatin,” or Romance (not to be confused with an older group of loan words more directly pulled from Latin).

Word of the day: Colibri

Many people (mistakenly) assume that, French being a Romance language and Hungarian being… difficult, the two could not be more different. Think again! For various historical reasons, cross-pollination has definitely occurred between the two cultures. I’d like to occasionally share my findings with you.

Today’s word: colibri (Fr) and kolibri (Hu). In English, it means “hummingbird.”

The origin of the word is somewhat ambiguous, though the popular citation is an extinct indigenous Caribbean language. I was somewhat unconvinced, given that the word for hummingbird in various island dialects was nothing like “colibri.”

The Centre National des Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales gave this explanation (my translation):

Etymol. and Hist. 1640 colibry. Orig. obsc. Despite the location of its first attestations (v. König, p. 73), the word does not appear to be indigenous to the Caribbean islands nor to Galibi (Surinam). A derivation of the Occitane colobro, colubro (grass snake) because of the hummingbird’s sudden fits of anger, the word was brought to the Antilles by French colonists, difficult from phonetic and semantic perspectives.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any Hungarian resources to support this explanation. A few dictionaries mentioned it as a South American word, the true Hungarian being “virágmadár” (flowerbird). I have a hunch that a marriage between the Hungarian and French royal families around that first date listed (1640) helped pave the way for the adoption of the term, but there’s no telling without more research.