Gail Owen

Few realise that Serbian and Croatian are actually two separate languages and Serbo-Croatian no longer exists. There is much discussion in the literary world as to whether Serbo-Croatian actually ever did exist as a language. Many Croatian linguists would argue that there never has been a unified language and that Serbian and Croatian have always been very distinct, some Serbian linguists argue the complete opposite.

Whilst the two languages are often said to be mutually intelligible, and do share quite a lot of vocabulary, linguistically they are individual languages in their own right. Roevin guarantees that your Serbian translations will only ever be completed by a native Serbian speaker and never by a Croatian; there are subtle, but significant differences between the two languages, we acknowledge the importance of these differences and ensure the most appropriate translator works on your text.

Opinions are not the only distinguishing factor between these languages. Croats only use the Latin alphabet; whilst Serbian is written with both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. It is difficult to specify exactly what percentage of the population commonly uses which alphabet, but both appear to be taught equally in Serbian schools. Before the formation of The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 the Cyrillic alphabet was used everywhere. After 1918 Latin became more popular and was used in certain areas of modern day Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia. Jovan Skerlic, a famous literary historian from Belgrade proposed that Latin be deemed the sole alphabet of use to avoid continued literary confusion. However, no official guidelines were put in place to secure this and the confusion did and to some extent still does continue. According to research completed by the Association for the Protection of Cyrillic, over 50% of public inscriptions are in the Latin alphabet.

Today Cyrillic is the official alphabet and is used in all the official documents, reports and the majority of newspapers. However, most university text books are written in the Latin alphabet, although high school text books are still mostly written in Cyrillic. In the main, technical papers, medical reports, press releases and documents which contain a large number of trademarks or foreign loan words appear in the Latin alphabet. Financial, legal texts are found mainly in Cyrillic.

Roevin’s Serbian translators only translate into their mother tongue and our account managers liaise closely with the translators to ensure that they translate into the most appropriate alphabet for your particular document

Roevin provides high quality translations from and into Serbian. For a free quotation please contact us.