Translate a PowerPoint presentation into Hungarian

What Hungarian changes on a slide

Hungarian is agglutinative: where English strings several words together, Hungarian fuses suffixes and compounds into a single block. Quality assurance plan becomes minőségbiztosítási terv. On slides this matters most for titles in tight placeholders, table cells and shapes (arrows, badges, labels), where one word may no longer fit on a line and cannot be broken just anywhere.

• Title capitalisation: only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised. An English title in title case such as Quarterly Sales Results becomes Negyedéves értékesítési eredmények.
• Personal names: family name first, given name second, so Kovács Anna, not Anna Kovács. On a team slide, check the order of Hungarian names.
• Dates and numbers: year, month, day with full stops, 2025. március 14. or 2025.03.14.; a decimal comma (12,5%) and a space as thousands separator (1 500).
• Quotation marks: low opening, high closing, „minőség”.
• Plural after a number: the noun stays singular, 5 dia (5 slides), 3 új termék (3 new products, not termékek). Hungarian has two CLDR plural categories (one, other), yet after a numeral the noun form does not change, which often puzzles reviewers who do not read Hungarian.

The letters ő and ű: a font trap

Hungarian has two letters with a double acute accent, ő and ű (capitals Ő and Ű). They are distinct from ö and ü: öt means "five", őt means "him" or "her". The most common fault is replacing them with õ (tilde) or û (circumflex), a legacy of old encodings or of fonts that lack the correct character.

In a .pptx, translated text takes the font set by the theme or the text box. If that font does not include ő and ű, PowerPoint substitutes another one for those letters only, so you see a character of a different shape or weight in the middle of a word, for instance in szőlő or különböző. The result can even vary between computers depending on the fonts installed.

Before translating, type Árvíztűrő tükörfúrógép, the classic Hungarian test phrase containing every accented vowel, into a text box in your template. Look at it in regular, bold and italic: if a letter stands out, change the font in the theme rather than slide by slide.

What Manuce returns, and what it leaves as is

Manuce translates the text on every slide: titles, placeholders, text boxes, shapes, grouped shapes and tables. You get your original .pptx back with its theme, images, shape positions, animations and transitions; only the text changes. The translation also comes as a Word file, a PDF and plain text, handy for a Hungarian-speaking colleague who wants to review it without PowerPoint.

What is not done at present:

• speaker notes are not translated; if a Hungarian presenter relies on them, plan to handle them separately;
• text in charts, SmartArt, slide masters and text embedded in images stays in the original language: an axis label reading Revenue will not become Árbevétel;
• a paragraph mixing several formats takes the formatting of its start. Hungarian word order often differs, so the word you had in bold is in a different place anyway;
• text box sizes are not recalculated, so a long compound may overflow a fixed box. If autofit is set in PowerPoint, it applies.

Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations. Hungarian carries a surcharge: a ×1.25 coefficient applies to the per-word rate.

Preparing the file

• Test the theme font with ő and ű, as described above.
• Turn on autofit for narrow boxes, or leave spare room in titles, shapes and table cells: munkavédelmi előírások takes far more space than safety rules.
• If a chart or SmartArt carries labels that matter, recreate them as ordinary text boxes, which will be translated.
• Avoid isolated bold words mid-sentence; put the key word at the start of the line instead.
• For a product name or acronym that must stay unchanged, check the free sample and then the translation. In Hungarian, suffixes attach to it with a hyphen (a PDF-ben, az EU-ban): that is the rule, not an error.

Checking the Hungarian result

• Search the delivered Word file for õ and û: correct Hungarian contains none.
• Run through the slide show to spot overflow, starting with titles, shapes and tables.
• Check name order, date format and decimal commas in key figures.
• Check the article before brand names: a or az depending on the first sound (az Excel, a Word).
• Make sure the register is consistent: formal Ön and informal te should not alternate from slide to slide.
• List the items left in the original language (charts, SmartArt, images) so you can handle them yourself.

For a deck shown to a Hungarian client or partner, the Professional or Premium level fits best; Essential is enough to understand a presentation you have received.

In practice

1. Check that the theme font displays ő and ű, and turn on autofit for narrow boxes.
2. Upload the .pptx: the quote appears straight away, based on the exact word count.
3. Read the free sample translated into Hungarian at your chosen level, then pay.
4. Download the translated .pptx along with the Word, PDF and plain-text versions.
5. Review the slides: overflow, stray õ or û, dates, name order and items left untranslated.