About István Horváth

Originally a Transylvanian Hungarian journalist, theatre critic, translator, author, blogger (earlier known as Horváth Sz. István in his homeland).

At the end of the last century he moved to Canada, where first he studied cross-cultural communication and applied linguistics, then became a freelance interpreter and translator. In 2004 he started his own web design and internet publishing and marketing business.

During his years in Canada, Istvan published only online; he is considered one of the pioneers of blogging in Hungarian language (since 2002). Istvan blogs in English and in Hungarian as well. He published a few e-books and tutorials related to the WordPress blog engine. He often travels between foreign lands and languages.

Before coming to the brave New World he served as a humanitarian aid worker, representing the  Hungarian Interchurch Aid in missions by ACT in Chechnya and, before that, in Bosnia & Herzegovina. The most interesting and very formative period of his adult life, rich in stories and adventures. 

When he started working in Bosnia, he left behind in Budapest a boring sales manager position, which he took up almost as a protest (and to prevent starving, of course) when political games in newspaper-ownership ended his beloved journalist and columnist career. Since the early university years in Transylvania Istvan dreamed to become a journalist… however, the regime considered him not trustworthy: he was allowed to publish but not to be part of any newspaper staff.

Masonic intermezzo:

He was initiated in Freemasonry in the “regular and perfect lodge Egyenlőség” (=Equality), under the Symbolic Grand Lodge of Hungary, in the East of Budapest. Humanitarian work and the second emigration drove him away from his mother lodge, so his Masonic journey was completed in Canada where he affiliated with the Electric Lodge in Hamilton, serving as Worshipful Master from 2018 to 2022. He is also a founding member of Templum Lucis Lodge, the second Observant Lodge formed in Ontario. Also a member of Heritage Lodge, the Ontario research lodge, and  Canada’s only virtual lodge: Castle Island Virtual Lodge, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Royal Arch Mason and 32° Scottish Rite member. 
More in line with his interest in research he became member of the Philaletes Society; of the Quatuor Coronati Correspondence Circle (QCCC), and the Scottish Rite Research Society.

Prior to emigrating to Hungary he worked as a technical translator in his hometown, providing Romanian translations of outdated Russian industrial equipment; in his spare time he also translated into Hungarian a novel by Vladimir Nabokov – The Defence, which was published in two editions.

Right after the university he worked as a teacher for several years in the city of Dej. At the Babeș-Bolyai University he obtained a degree in Russian and Hungarian languages and literature: that’s how the specialties were put together at that time. Of course, he had to finish the high school before being admitted to university, which he did in a school that bore many, many names during the centuries and was founded in 1579 by a Transylvanian prince who also became the king of Poland. History becomes second nature when spending years among those walls…

Istvan (István, by Hungarian spelling) was born in the city of Cluj (today: Cluj-Napoca) or Kolozsvár or Klausenburg – the place has different names in the different languages of its inhabitants.