Is the Hungarian Language a Barrier for App Localization?

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 ** This article is updated regularly. It was last updated in April 2021 **

Hungarian is widely considered to be one the hardest languages in the world for English-speakers to learn. This is true because of difficult grammar, spelling, and pronunciation. Magyar, as it’s known to locals, has either 18 or 35 distinct cases, depending on how you count your cases. Whatever the case, there are also 14 vowels, twice as many as in English. And there are two forms of verbs, definite and indefinite – definitely confusing!

According to enet, more than half of Hungarians have smartphones, and more than 85% of Hungarian smartphone users use mobile internet, including apps. In addition to the 10 million residents of Hungary, there are estimated to be another 3 to 5 million Hungarian speakers living abroad, half in Romania. That makes Hungarian the 12th most popular spoken language in Europe. However, linguistically, Magyar is something of an island, related to Finnish and Estonian, but outside the linguistic mainstream of the continent.

In working with Hungarian clients and the Hungarian language, Ofer Tirosh, CEO of Tomedes translation services, says “Hungarian is a complex language, which is of interest to me, as a translation services provider. It is its very complexity that brings it to life, with its infinite cases and flexible word choices. Hungarian, or Magyar as the natives call it, often seems like a secretive code to new language learners. Yet, in reality, it’s an expressive language which relies often on metaphor, allowing language to express our incommunicable life in the world.”

2-Way Localization: Hungarians using apps and apps supporting Hungarian

These days the status of a language is not so much determined by the quantity of speakers but also by its use in digital content and in software. While the Hungarian Wikipedia is in the top 20, ahead of far more popular languages like Arabic and Korean. But the difficulties of Magyar, and the relatively small size of the domestic market has induced many software developers to skip it as a language in the localization of their applications.

A survey by Daily News Hungary found the most popular mobile apps to be Jófogás, dubbed the Hungarian eBay, BKK of Budapest’s transit system and its competitor SmartCity, Vonatinfó of the national railway system MÁV, and Bolt, Hungary’s answer to Uber. All these apps are useful, and target the Hungarian marketplace square on.

But the use cases that interest us here involve the interplay of Hungarians and foreigners. Will a visitor to Hungary who does not speak a lick of Magyar be able to get around and get things done with locally made apps?  And do foreign app makers support the Hungarian market with localized and translated software products? Does the difficulty of the Hungarian deter foreign developers, and does it make life difficult for local developers to internationalize their products?

Localization and Translation: Understanding the Differences

 Before getting into the nitty gritty of localization in the Hungarian context, it’s important to distinguish this process from translation. Translation is a subset of localization, though it may be the most important and time-consuming part. In addition to translating all text, there is a need to convert date and numerical formats as well as change measurement and currency units. More subtly, localization also requires ensuring that cultural differences and preferences are taken into account. Colors, language, and imagery that work well in one country may offend in another.

In practical terms, translation and localization are often used interchangeably. Many translation services will be able to perform localization services, and many localization providers can supply translation. That said, localization is a largely technical process involving specialized software for managing the translation and for integrating the language tables with the other code in the website or app.  If translation services are already developing websites and applications, they will be able to handle the coding internally. Often the packages will provide a perfunctory language translation program. However, for more complex apps, they will need to outsource the translation component to a language services provider or, potentially, a freelance translator.