Fordítás | Szakfordítás | Translation

Translation Since 1983 - 50 Languages, 1,600 Translators

Reflex, founded in 1983, is one of the oldest translation agencies in Hungary.
We have introduced the ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management System in 2004, and were qualified as NATO Supplier in the same year.
Our offices in Miskolc, Budapest and Gy%u0151r prepare specialised translations with top references and 100 % Satisfaction Guarantee from and into the following 50 languages:

Albanian Danish Hebrew Malay Slovenian American English Dutch Hungarian Mongolian Spanish Arabic English Indonesian Norwegian Swedish Bosnian Esperanto Italian Persian Turkish Bulgarian Estonian Japanese Polish Ukrainian Byelorussian Finnish Korean Portuguese Vietnamese Catalan Flemish Kurdish Romanian
Chinese (mandarin) French Latin Russian
Chinese (simplified) Georgian Latvian Ruthenian
Croatian German Lithuanian Serbian
Czech Greek Macedonian Slovak

Should you have any question or to place a sample test send us an email to contact@reflex.hu or just call us at 361-269-4781.
If you need a free quote, please click here.

For those visitors who are not familiar with this subject we have collected the following information:

Food for thought and good advice about translation

The words below %u2013 just like all other texts on this website %u2013 constitute the intellectual product of Lajos Énekes, founder of Reflex Translation Services. If you come across them on web pages or written materials of any other translation company %u2013 and, unfortunately, chances are you will %u2013 they were get from us.

Ordering translation services

Don%u2019t wait until the very last moment. If the deadline is near, try to forward the original text to the translator or agency in due time. It is not only the translation itself that takes time but also its subsequent proofreading, and possible stylistic revision. The latter is especially necessary if the translation is to be published or reproduced by a printing house or in some other way.
Inform the translation agency about all the modifications of the materials or the relevant contract. Make sure that the document you send is the final version and is correctly worded.
If possible, attach ample background information, for example, a list of technical terms, product descriptions, or previous translations.
Provide the contact information of those involved in the project (for example, the author or user of the materials).
It is always more practical to send the material in digital format, if there is such available to you, versus printed material. This is mostly to facilitate a faster and simpler determination of the quantity of the source text.
If the text is bulky or consists of several individual files, send them in a zip file.

How are translations charged?

There are several different methods used to charge translations worldwide.
The most widespread option is to take the word count of the source (original) text for the cost basis. In Germany, on the other hand, the lines are counted.
In Hungary, translations are generally charged according to the number of characters, including the spaces of the target language, i.e. the finished translation, which has one major drawback: it is impossible to provide an exact quotation at the moment of ordering.

What surcharges exist?

This is one of the areas where less experienced client may be unpleasantly surprised when the invoice is issued. There are several translation agencies that, rather unacceptably, obtain the work by providing a low quote and then increase this "basic price" up to double or triple the originally offered fee, referring to various, previously unmentioned surcharges (urgency, rare language, low readability, text with lots of tables, especially difficult language, etc.)
Therefore, regardless of how urgent the job is, you should always insist on a binding, written confirmation from the service provider, including the deadline and final price.

What is a certified translation?

In Hungarian relations, with some malice, we must say that it is a translation performed by OFFI (Országos Fordító és Fordításhitelesít%u0151 Iroda %u2013 National Translation and Translation Authorising Bureau - 1063 Budapest, Bajza u. 52.).
At the moment, this is the only organisation in Hungary entitled to provide certified translations, although the modification of the relevant law has been on the agenda for years (but the circles with opposing interests have limitless opportunities to maintain the status quo%u2026). According to the proposal, any translator who has the prescribed qualification, and fulfils the other conditions, can obtain the right to perform authorised translations, provided that he/she has passed the necessary examination. Naturally, only individuals will be able to take the examination, so serious translation agencies are likely to engage in a serious competition to increasingly "collect" authorised translators.
Regardless of the above-mentioned facts, several public notaries have been offering the "authorisation of translations" in recent years, which practically means that the public notary, who claims to speak the given language proficiently, attaches an authorisation clause to the translation. Naturally, this activity is illegal; what is more, the law is violated by the public notaries themselves in this case. It seems that the "liberalism" of Hungarian law enforcement is limitless.

In practice, we can also talk about the so-called "official translation" that does not exist legally, yet it is widely used in everyday life. This is the common name of the translations made by "simple" translation agencies (non-OFFI) on their own prints that are stamped and completed with a clause. Although these translations are just as authorised as those sealed by public notaries, i.e. not authorised at all, they are nearly always suitable to be accepted as authorised translations abroad (furthermore, they are far cheaper than those provided by OFFI).

Native translators

Well, they can provide the highest standard, so it is of no surprise that the authorities of the European Union only accept translations performed into the translator%u2019s native language.
Several companies advertise that their translators mostly, or exclusively, translate into their native languages. Nobody should fall for such slogans, at least not in Hungary.
If our customer so desires, and is willing to pay the extra cost, we can also choose from hundreds of foreign translators who are capable of completing translations in several language combinations that are linguistically perfect (albeit, not always professionally faultless %u2013 see language teachers%u2019 translations). There is no problem as long as the source language is Hungarian and the target language is, for example, Slovak, Romanian, or Ukrainian. The insolvable conflict between the customer%u2019s ambitions to minimise the translation fee and the financial demand of the translator arise when documents have to be translated from Hungarian or some other rare language to a world language, or particularly, into Asian languages.

Individual translator or a translation agency?

It depends on the nature of the work.
The translation of books, for instance, is generally performed by one translator or at most a handful of specialised, or perhaps, literary translators. This is how a uniform style and wording can be ensured most effectively throughout the text. Of course, there are a precious few such specialists, who are not cheap and often work for the same publisher/customer. Therefore, this rather closed %u2013 and elite %u2013 circle of translators is usually not accessible by average customers.

At the other end of the scale of complexity, there are simple business and private letters, especially if the translation is performed into the native language. Such tasks can easily and satisfactorily be tackled even by a secondary school student that is specialised in the given language, for example, the child of a colleague at the customer%u2019s company.

The successful delivery of projects that fall between these two extremes is not, however, all that simple. This category may include extremely diverse tasks from contracts of several dozen pages that are occasionally worth millions of Euro, through complete materials of tender proposals, to the multiple volume technical documentations of entire industrial plants. Such projects can only be successfully executed by translation agencies, and not just any translation agency.

It may sound incredible but today in Hungary anybody can launch a translation bureau or operate as an individual translator, which not only lack the appropriate qualifications but also often without a university degree. The abundance of service providers in the Yellow Pages must be viewed with this fact in mind. The vast majority of these "entrepreneurs" are simply incapable of delivering serious translation tasks correctly. Knowing all this, it may be worth considering as to just how useful the rather widespread "telephoning" method can be to choose the "right one" (we receive several such phone calls every day). The truth is that it is only suitable for one purpose: to find the cheapest offer.

Naturally, we also strive to keep our costs low, including the fees paid to our translators, but when we choose our colleagues by far the most important factor is their linguistic and professional competence, and it is irrelevant as to what the lowest price of some "translators" is for a given project (translators%u2019 self-confidence can be endless%u2026).