EAGLE SOLUTIONS
In short: A business in Harghita County needs a Romanian version once it wants customers beyond the local Hungarian-speaking community, runs an online shop, or wants to appear in Romanian search results. Adding a language adds only 25-40 percent to the price, not double, since the design is shared.
In Harghita County most businesses communicate in Hungarian, but a significant share of customers, partners and authorities search, read and order in Romanian. The language of your website is therefore a traffic and business decision as well as a question of identity, which is why a multilingual website often pays for itself. Let us look at when each option makes sense.
Who is fine with a single-language site?
If you serve an exclusively local, Hungarian-speaking clientele (say, a village guesthouse that only hosts guests from Hungary, or a local service provider whose every customer comes through personal referrals), then a well-written Hungarian site is enough. Multilingual support would only be a cost here.
When do you need Romanian?
- If you want customers from Romania beyond Székely Land: searches from Brașov, Bucharest or Cluj-Napoca arrive in Romanian.
- If you run an online shop: most online shoppers in Romania search for products in Romanian, even in towns with a mixed population.
- If you are an institution, an association or a grant-funded project: a Romanian version is often a requirement.
- If you want to show up in Google Business Profile and in search results for Romanian-language terms too. A Hungarian-only site simply does not rank for them.
- If you run a medical practice or clinic: a significant share of patients search for healthcare in Romanian, and clear, bilingual information matters most when requesting an appointment. I have written more about this on the healthcare website development page.
And English?
English pays off when you target foreign guests, exports or international partners: accommodation, festivals, artisan products, IT services. A local repair shop does not need it. My own site is trilingual because some of my agency partners are abroad. That follows from my client base and is not a general rule.
How is a good multilingual website built?
The key is that every language gets its own full pages, with their own URLs (for example /ro/servicii/), titles and descriptions, instead of text translated by a button. We tell search engines separately which page is which language version (hreflang), so Google shows the Romanian page to someone searching in Romanian and the Hungarian page to someone searching in Hungarian. In WordPress I handle this with the Polylang or WPML plugin, for business websites and online shops alike.
What does an extra language cost?
An additional language does not double the price, because the design and the system are shared. Typically the cost grows by 25-40 percent per language, depending on the amount of content. The biggest item is the quality of the translation: I use machine translation only as a starting point, and the texts go live after a native-level review. You can find the starting prices on the pricing page.
What do I recommend to most local businesses?
Start in Hungarian and Romanian, and add English later if the traffic justifies it. In the Székely Land market a bilingual site pays for itself in most cases, because it speaks to the local community and to Romanian-speaking customers at the same time. If you are not sure which option fits you, write to me on the contact page, and we will think it through in a short conversation.
