Driving Course in English

Not uncommon. Been there.

Basically: http://www.engrish.com/

Even governments are not immune. Randomly pick some Hungarian towns and the English page will widely vary in the quality of the translation.

Only guessing, but off the top of my head: they used Google Translate (which is far from perfect), or they had a relative who had a "translation" company.

Options:

- Put up with it.
- Walk away, consider it an education tax and find another company that has good translations (ask to see material before buying).
- Demand a refund for failure to provide the product advertised
    -- If they refuse to give a refund options may include:
        --- Make a formal complaint to the EU consumer protection office.
        --- File an official collection action against the company.
        --- Get an attorney and sue.

Welcome to Hungary...
Sorry this is going badly for you, I understand how insane translations are here.
My husband speaks and reads perfect HU but after over 40 years in the US even he is confused in Hu at times.
Please let us know how this turns out for you. I am not driving in Hungary because of the cost and the fear of the insane paperwork.
I am also slightly afraid to drive here in case some accident happens and I am stuck with an insane mad person yelling into the cell phone who doesn't  speak a word of English. Driving in S. Cal. traffic since 1974 but afraid to do so here, you are a brave one that's for sure!

Aries25au wrote:

...An example in first aid " wound fertilise"........come on now do you **** in the wound or should you STERILISE it ?
Really now..and what is an " Ankle rick?".........................

Optimistically, I'd think it was some kind of Kafkaesque mind game. But the weird way things are going here recently,  it's probably equally likely to be a Fidesz or Jobbik or Christian Democrat conspiracy.

I've had whole documents sent to me that have been put through Google Translate.  That's 1000s of pages of absolute drivel. Their language skills are getting worse and worse as nationalism continues to rise. It'll just get worse as the population dumbs down. 

I've heard of people doing an intensive driving course properly elsewhere in English (Malta, Ireland, Cyprus, UK etc), then trading the issued EU style license for a local EU HU version. I've heard it could be done in 2-3 weeks from scratch.

How about take a class in First Aid in Medical University (English program at Sammelweis)
Real knowledge - Real Document - Real certificate. I got over that first aid with certificate from the school.
or just pm me and I will give you contact of mine instructor. maybe he can sort something out for you!

Cheers!

Thanks for the replies. Its nice to read peoples thoughts and opinions.
Well the story continues. I did my first aid course and passed, but not without some debate with testers as to what I knew and what I read. After a long explanation of how wrong the translations were I was given the benefit of the doubt and passed. BUT it still remains a sad issue of such poor translation. And after contacting the company mentioned on the said translation first aid document I was met with great surprise and disbelief from the owner that teh translation was not correct. NO COMMENT.
Next have finally passed theory test, in English, but when I didnt score enough I took the step and showed and explained to the tester that the translation made NO SENSE and proceeded to show and explain what is correct. He was very understanding and I passed. :-)
Now for the driving test......oh boy.....................fact is I already drive here on an International license but thought I would get an EU one if I knew it was so crazy I would not have bothered.
I have been driving for 45 years and some of the rules here are a complete joke.
But thats Hungary :-)

Congrats so far, you are a brave soul!
Sounds like a huge hassle, perhaps you have opened up the subject of the translation issues and in the future they will correct the problems.

Thank you.
I am now doing my driving part of my course. Boy oh boy thats interesting. Didnt realise that there were so many ill mannered and impatient drivers here, and I have driven many places in the world, but this beats them all.
Anyone have any ideas wher or who to approach regarding the poor translations? I would love to be able to approach someone about getting this issue looked at further.
many thanks for all the replies.

tmt0685 wrote:

How about take a class in First Aid in Medical University (English program at Sammelweis)
Real knowledge - Real Document - Real certificate. I got over that first aid with certificate from the school.
or just pm me and I will give you contact of mine instructor. maybe he can sort something out for you!

Cheers!

Are there any links to this course?  I am interested for general knowledge.  Does anyone know if they can do a one for kids (like aged 12 and above)?  (That might sound odd, but they do in the UK)

I am happy to send to you the docs I have that I was given. If you can work your way through the poor translation or edit the sections and fix the poor translations its yours. I have paid for the docs but happy to send to you, if thats any help

Could you give us a "ball park" figure on how much all this costs in forints?
I have basically just given up driving in Budapest, don't need or want the stress but it would be something to think about if the price was reasonable.
My husband took the HU driving course in 1968 or 69. Was 100% an oral exam followed by a practical driving the next day.Back then it took over 6 months to finish the course.
He failed the first oral because he got one answer wrong, had a redo. He was tested on several different vehicles.
Motor bike, cargo truck, car, passenger van etc. 11 endorsements. Of course in those days the roads were not full of bad drivers and not over crowded.
He drove a taxi in Las Vegas off and on for 7 years but says the roads in HU are a nightmare even for him with so much experience.

I can only suggest he try and contact the school that I went through as they do a special course for English speakers. Each person is different as what is the requirements. I am happy with the school just not the general translation, but that is NOT the schools fault. As I have been already driving for over 40 years I only had to do the theory and a short driving course and that in comparison to the full course reasonable. The site is  drivingschoolinenglish.hu.
they have been great and they were the most helpful and price checking the most reasonable also.They are located in Distirict 2

Aries25au wrote:

Didnt realise that there were so many ill mannered and impatient drivers here, and I have driven many places in the world, but this beats them all.

The drivers here disturb me, and I grew up driving in LA traffic, so am not exactly inexperienced with bad drivers.

All those little "shrines" you may see by the road in Hungary, often at blind curves or cross roads, are where someone got a little too impatient or inattentive, resulting in a death.

My wife recently forgot her phone at a restaurant, and I turned our car around to go back and get it. On the drive back, not even 2 minutes had passed, and we came across a 4 car accident, two cars rolled over in the ditch, at a blind curve (of course) that we just went by before I turned around. Just by a few minutes we avoided possible death. And just last week, while waiting for a bus I saw a car pass a slow tractor with a trailer on a hill, on a blind curve (again -- of course) and the driver doing the passing was also talking on his phone while driving.

I was waiting for a bus because I find myself driving less and less in Hungary. We are even considering selling our car. For a cross boarder journey I take a train. And I frequent buses in Hungary which have been modernized since we moved here, and are now very comfortable, convenient, and go almost everywhere. I even feel safer on my bike than in a car. The rule in Hungary, you surely just learned in your course, is to give over a meter of space when passing a cyclist -- a rule that drivers here usually follow ...... even if means them not slowing down and driving into oncoming traffic. Crazy.

But of course, for those that drive for a living, or simply like motoring around on weekends for pleasure of hobby, then getting a driving license is a necessity.

I'm a long way from Budapest but I find the general standard of driving to be pretty good in Hungary. There are a few pushy and aggressive drivers but they are usually in cars with German or Austrian plates. I also see very little evidence of crashes apart from in icy weather. Actually I'm a lot more wary of pedestrians than other drivers, especially in car parks. They seem to have complete disregard for their own safety and work on the basis that they always have right of way.

Lol at wound fertilization! It is an English world, the first 4 letters of which coincide with the first 4 letters of sterilization in Hungarian (fertotlenit), so it almost makes sense if you don't speak any English at all.

You could take a page out of that book, get an official translation back to Hungarian at OFFI for a few thousand HUF if you need ammunition.

There are plenty of bad accidents in Hungary and they show the details.  Here's one today:

accident on the road to the airport

Notice the long box on the floor and the van with other long boxes.

And here's the other side of that collision (with a taxi):

The other side of the collision...

Mrs Fluffy and I drive very defensively here and I advise everyone else to do the same.  Leave a large distance between you and the vehicle in front.  Assume everyone is unpredictable.  There are just so many dangerous drivers here.  In one 8km journey, we counted 5 dangerous events and usually we will see 2 or 3 each day. Just today  we saw someone driving on the pavement (US: sidewalk), a van overtaking on blind corners at high speed and someone turning around in the middle of the road in a corner where traffic was moving about 50 km/h.

yes we saw a car make a u turn right in the middle of a major blvd.
My husband drives very defensive even with his 40 some years of experience, 9 of them being a cab driver.( 2 were here in Budapest many moons ago)
Even when he has the right of way on these busy tight Budapest side streets he slows down and looks both ways.
He has actually put the fear of God into me so badly that I am not even interested in driving in the city.
I know it used to be very difficult to pass the driving tests in Hungary but from what I've seen in the past few years I wonder how many ever got their papers.

Well Firstly Happy Easter to all.
I have i finally passed my driving course and now wait eagerly for my license to arrive. 3 to 4 weeks wait before it is processed. I must ay what an experience. Thanks be that its over.
1 question I am not sure of and get so many different answers and thats from the license department, that I am hoping someone here can answer.
I have dual citizenship, I have done the driving course and passed, so why do I have to give up my "other" license from my other country? I still travel back to my birth country and want to drive there and my license from that country is valid for another 5 years, yet they say I have to give it up here why? Makes no logical sense. I drive here in Hungary or an EU country with my EU license and when in a non- EU country that I was born in I use that license. So far I have been given different answers. Please someone enlighten me

Well done on passing  If I were you I would approach your question from the opposite direction. Make enquiries in Australia to see whether you can drive on a Hungarian licence there. If you can't then you have grounds for protesting to the Hungarian licence people.

Aries25au wrote:

why do I have to give up my "other" license from my other country?

Because that is Hungarian law.

No, it does not make sense. But a lot of laws here do not seem to make sense to me, but they are the law. When I asked I also got a lot of different and sometimes silly answers. Don't expect to get a "correct" answer, or be able to weed out the correct answer amongst a cavalcade of incorrect ones. The desire here to always have an answer (even if that "answer" is nothing but conjecture or opinion) does seem to be a local peculiarity.

For what it is worth, when I got my driving license in Switzerland, the Swiss did not ask for my US license. In fact, I still have it (even it is now long expired).

Happy Easter holiday to you as well.
yes, my husband had to turn in his US driving papers when he got his renewed HU one.
We have no clue why, other then since he turned it in he just got a new Hungarian one and didn't have to redo any of the old testing. he took all the tests in HU back in 1968 or so.
I would think if you went through new testing and all if you had not told them about your previous experience they probably wouldn't of asked for you to turn it in.
So many DUMB laws here.
I noticed on my 5 year resident permit( from USA) that I am not to leave Hungary longer then 3 months at a time without letting them know I am out of HU. What? I'm on house arrest?

@Aries25au

I would just go with the flow and hand in your Oz licence. It is so easy to replace the Oz licence when you go back home. I even replaced mine when I was living in South Sudan and did the replacement/renewal online.

I agree, anywhere is easier then HU to get new driving papers.
In the states the HU one works find for everything other then being a local ID for casino comps.
My US driving papers were renewed last year, good to go for another 7 years.
My husband would just have to go in Vegas and get a date to take another NV test, easy enough and cheap.
I wonder why it is so hard in HU other then perhaps the gov.wants to see people on public transport since they spent a fortune on new buses and trams.
In the US and elsewhere the auto industry wants people to drive so they will buy their cars.
Conspiracy theory, I'm big on thinking the man is out to get us all...

Thanks that is a good point considering I am an Australian citizen and can NOT drive with my Hungarian license there unless I get an International license permit. But why I ask should I when I am an Australian citizen also and have held an Australian license for over 40 years?

Don't know about the laws in OZ, in the US just about anyone that isn't legally blind or mentally ill can get papers! Makes for fun days out driving, almost forgot about the crazies who carry guns and run after you if you cut them off or they think you cut them off by mistake.
Once on a busy S. Calif. freeway I had to stop on a dime because some mental man was running back and forth across the freeway lanes, one of the scary moments ever of driving. Hit the brakes until they smoked then gun the engine to go before getting hit from behind.So far nothing that insane has happened here in Hungary.

Whether or not your license from wherever is recognised depends on the international road traffic treaties. I cannot remember off hand but mutual recognition is handled by I think by two treaties, one in 1957 and another one.  If your selected/home countries are not parties to those treaties, then there's no mutual recognition except temporarily with various versions of the IDP (International Driving Permit) which contains translations. You'd have to Google it for the details.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Don't know about the laws in OZ, in the US just about anyone that isn't legally blind or mentally ill can get papers! Makes for fun days out driving, almost forgot about the crazies who carry guns and run after you if you cut them off or they think you cut them off by mistake.
Once on a busy S. Calif. freeway I had to stop on a dime because some mental man was running back and forth across the freeway lanes, one of the scary moments ever of driving. Hit the brakes until they smoked then gun the engine to go before getting hit from behind.So far nothing that insane has happened here in Hungary.

I won't get onto US gun laws here (much as I would like to) but it is certainly not that easy to pass the driving test in UK these days. I passed my motorcycle test there in 1979 and the car one in 1981 but it is a much more complicated process these days. Sadly these changes do not seem to be reflected in a corresponding improvement in the standard of driving but that is mostly down to ignoring what was taught rather than not knowing the correct thing to do. In Hungary they do at least have regular eye tests for drivers, something that does not happen in UK. My father still held a valid UK driving licence after he was registered blind!