Bosnian translation services

Bosnian translation services Diskusija offers

Diskusija’s team of experienced and carefully selected, native Bosnian translators provides fast and high-quality Bosnian translation services across a broad range of professional fields.

Our regional knowledge and experience make us an ideal, reliable partner for south-eastern European languages. Our project managers are here to help you to find the best individualized solution for your Bosnian translation needs, guiding our linguists and work processes accordingly in order to ensure you receive the best possible result.

Our Bosnian translation services primarily include the following language pairs:

English to Bosnian
German to Bosnian
French to Bosnian

This list is by no means exhaustive, so if you don’t see the combination you need here, contact us to discuss your Bosnian translation needs!

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About the Bosnian language

The Bosnian language is a South Slavic language, spoken mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina where it is an official language along with the Serbian and Croatian languages to which it is closely related. Bosnian is also spoken in parts of Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Macedonia and by several hundreds of thousands of emigrants in Western Europe, the United States and Turkey.

Approximately 2.2 million (according to 2004 data) people speak Bosnian worldwide, with 2 million of them living in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Bosnian language is sometimes called Bosniak, indicating that it is the standard language of Bosniaks, not all Bosnians who consist of Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. There is still debate about the correct name of the language.

The Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian as well as Montenegrin languages are based on the same Shtokavian dialect. At the time of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it was considered a Serbo-Croatian dialect and only officially recognised as a separate language in 1991-1992.

The modern Bosnian language uses the Latin alphabet, though Cyrillic is also accepted and used in public but this is becoming less common. It shares a lot of vocabulary and grammar with Serbian and Croatian. All three languages are mutually understandable and the main differences are in the spelling and pronunciation of some words.

Modern language: alphabet, vocabulary, spelling, grammar

The present-day Bosnian language was influenced by Turkish and Arabic; it has Islam-Oriental loanwords. Its Latin alphabet consists of 30 letters, 5 of which are vowels and the rest consonants. Most letters represent only one sound; and all the letters in a word are pronounced.

Bosnian vocabulary is shared by Serbian and Croatian, but there are some words, forms, idioms and phrases unique to Bosnian.

The grammar is defined as Serbo-Croatian grammar. Nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. There are seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative and instrumental, and words also have singular and plural forms.

Adjectives in Bosnian change to match the nouns they modify. Verbs, as in other Slavic languages, can have perfect aspects, defining actions that are completed, and imperfect aspects for lasting, repeated, habitual actions. The indicative form of the verb has seven tenses: present, past, futures I and II, pluperfect, aorist and imperfect. Besides the indicative, the imperative, conditional and optative moods are also used.

History of the Bosnian language

Although use of Cyrillic script is declining, it is considered to be the first script of the written Bosnian language, which dates back to the 10-11th century. One of the oldest Bosnian literacy monuments, the Humac tablet, was written using Bosnian Cyrillic which is called bosančica. It was used in old state documents and on medieval tombstones.

However, the Bosniak elite wrote mostly in Turkish, Arabic or Persian. Bosniak national emancipation was not strong so the Bosnian language failed to become standardised in the 19th century. It was only at the turn of the 20th century that the renaissance or revival of the Bosnian language began. Bosniak writers of the time mostly wrote from abroad and used idioms that were closer to the Croatian form than Serbian but with distinctive Bosnian traits. They also used Latin script.

During the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1878 to 1908 by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bosnian was considered the sole official language. But after formal annexation in 1908, it was changed to Serbo-Croatian. It was also an official language during the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1943 to 1992.

After the dissolution of the SFR Yugoslavia, the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina of 1994 declared three languages, Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, as official languages.

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