duztee

Probably a bit of a long shot this one.
I have never in my long life been to a court room, not as accused or defendant, nor was I ever summoned for jury service.
Now living a peaceful retirement keeping to myself and not bothering anyone, I find I have been summoned to appear in a divorce proceeding!
I do know one of the people involved, but am no way involved in their life other than as a casual acquaintance. so I cannot see what useful testimony I could be required to give.

My question is will the court provide a translator? Irrespective of understanding basic Hungarian or not I would not want to make any legally binding statements in anything other than my mother tongue, so I fully understand exactly what I am saying.
Secondly if any forum members actually have previous experience of Hungarian court proceedings I would be glad of any info/input.

(Deadline to be relevant is middle of next month, June 2021)

Peter_in_Hungary

I was involved in a civil case some years back.
You are quite right to have a translator. This will be provided by the court.. (Court translators have to be accredited as such) and the translator will be paid for by the side calling you as witness. You should notify the court in writing, registered recorded delivery, of your need for a Hungarian / English translator.

Divorce comes under Family Law so it's going to be a bit different to civil law but when I had my involvement the court was a fairly relaxed affair inside the court but times and deadlines were strictly adhered to. Turn up 5 min late without prior warning and you are likely to loose the case. ('cos the other side will claim no show and win that way)

Dress code = casual.

FenTiger

I hope I'm never summoned here in Hungary. It would be very expensive because they'd need someone to translate from Hungarian to English, then another person to BSL and vice versa.
Some five or years ago I appeared in court in UK as a character witness for a deaf friend. As it was a case against eight deaf sign language users BSL interpreters were provided by the court. It was a fraud case. My deaf friend only worked there and wasn't involved in the fraudulent activities of the boss and his finance manager. The worse thing is the prosecution had determined every deaf person who worked for that company were involved. That's eight deaf employees in total. Six were found not guilty! My deaf friend being 62 at the time and a court case hanging over his head was forced to take early retirement because he couldn't see how anyone would employ him until the case had been concluded.

I agree best to speak in English and sign only anything in English. Do check the translators are competent with good reviews. I know too well how things can be mis-translated as it happened quite a few times when I used a BSL interpreter for work meetings. Sometimes they are out of their depth due to lack of experience or knowledge of finance jargon. Court experience would be important. Hence, for my deaf friends court case I decided to speak in English rather than be mis-translated from BSL!

Sachina

It's a basic human right to be allowed to speak in your native language when appearing in court. The court is obliged to provide a translator trained and qualified to interpret in court cases. I was called as the only witness in a court case in France where the court didn't provide a translator. Even though my French is reasonable I refused to answer any questions on the basis that it was not only against my Human Right, but due to my lack of knowledge of the language I might unwittingly incriminate the accused.