Serbian

Communication Platforms

Signal: Join the Serbian Signal Group

Note: You must join the group via your iOS or Android device.

Translation References

Style Guides

In an effort to have uniform Serbian translations, we urge translators to follow these guidelines. These are guidelines and not rules, and the translators should also take care of the uniformity of the translations for each project.

This guide assumes translation to cyrillic, so some of the rules are not applicable if the project uses Serbian latin alphabet.

Addressing the user

When addressing the user, use lowercase formal plural (ви/ваш) or first person singular (ти/твој) form. In projects that try to have a more informal user experience, singular might be more appropriate. Make sure that your choice is consistent throughout the project, in order to keep the translation clean and not confusing.

Gendered words

When referencing a person of unknown gender, use combined masculine and feminine form as seen in example(s) below:

• Петар Петровић вас је позвао/ла.

If there is a character length restriction, which are already an issue when translating to Serbian, try using passive:

• Позвао вас је Петар Петровић.

English names and commonly used words

Keep English names and abbrevations in their original spelling because while some are easily recognized and understood when transcribed and transliterated ("Фејсбук" – Facebook, "Гугл" – Google) others are not ("Epl" – Apple, "иОС" – iOS).

Technical terms should be translated if possible or transcribed. Acronyms and abbrevations should be transliterated only if they are commonly used as such.

Examples:

• Постави на YouTube
• Проследи GIF
• Преузето са GitHub-а
• Корисник вам је послао имејл
• Ресетуј апликацију

Capitalization

For titles and other cases where there is a phrase where the first letter of each word is capitalized (for example "Privacy Policy"), the proper way to capitalize in Serbian is to only capitalize the first letter of the phrase ("Правила о приватности"). There are exceptions to this rule, when the phrase/title includes words that are capitalized anyway (names of people, organizations, countries, etc).

Quotation marks

Use „ and ” for double quotation marks, and ’ for single quoatation marks.

Project Resources

• Microsoft Localization Style Guides [cyr] [lat]
• KDE Localization website [cyr]
• Glosbe — the multilingual online dictionary [en to sr]