Bosnian

Bosnian is an old language, with its roots tracing back to the Medieval Bosnian Church and the Church Slavonic. Throughout the language’s development, the Bosnian language and its people interacted with several powers and cultures that would come to influence the language in many ways.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, to start, Bosnia came under Ottoman rule, which would introduce Turkish, Arabic, and Persian influence into the language. Austro-Hungarian rule later would introduce Western European linguistic influences. Membership in Yugoslavia and later in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would introduce Serbo-Croatian influence, while also establishing Serbo-Croatian as another official language. In the modern day, efforts are made to standardize Bosnian and differentiate the language from Serbian and Croatian.

Translation, unfortunately, is not an easy task. Some languages form in similar contexts in relative proximity to one another, and sometimes these languages have easier translations between them or are even mutually intelligible. However, in the vast majority of cases, languages form in vastly different contexts, meaning that they aren’t only made up of different words, but also of different ideas and expressions altogether.

These cultural differences are what make direct translations so unreliable. A phrase in one language might not have a direct translation in another, which means that capturing the meaning and intention of the phrase in a translation will take a high degree of cultural understanding between the languages. Cultural understanding gives us the ability to navigate the nuance of languages, and to truly express the correct meaning and intention in the target language, not just a reasonable translation of the words.