Translation from Croatian
ALBA Translation Agency is ready to do both translation from Russian and English into Croatian and translation from Croatian into English and Russian as well as Croatian interpreting. In 2008, the turnover between Russia and Croatia amounted to EUR 2.28 milliard and in that period almost 176,000 tourists from Russia visited Croatia. The most often done is translation from Croatian of real estate documents and marriage/divorce certificates, as well as translation of tourist booklets into Croatian. In spite of the similarity between Russian and Croatian, the service of interpreting from Croatian during meetings, telephone conversations, court sessions or visits to notaries is also in demand.
Croatian is a South Slavic language and is predominantly spread in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it is the official language, as well as among the Croatian communities in other countries (for example, in the region of Molise in Italy). The Croatian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet.
Modern Standard Croatian has been formed on the base of a literature with a more than a 900-year history, which was written in a mixture of Church Slavonic and local dialects. The first written source in Croatian appeared in the 9th century, when Old Church Slavonic was adopted as the liturgical language and began to be used for secular interests. The most important literary text in Old Croatian is on the Baška tablet, which dates from the 11th century. It is a huge inscribed stone slab found in a small church of St. Lucy on the Croatian island with the hardly pronounceable name of Krk. The inscription on the slab was made in the Glagolitic script and contained important information concerning the history of Croatia, in particular, Demetrius Zvonimir, the King of Croatia of that time, was mentioned there. The standardisation of Croatian began from the publication by Fausto Veranzio (Faust Vrančić) in Venice of the five-language dictionary (Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europae linguarum – Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmatiae et Ungaricae) in 1595, as well as the publication by Bartol Kašić in 1604 of the first Croatian grammar (Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo). The Bible translation into Croatian by the Jesuit Kašić laid a foundation for Modern Croatian.
Interesting facts about Croatian:
• There are three dialects in Croatian, which are named after its word for “what”: the Chakavian dialect (cha), the Kajkavian dialect (kaj) and the Shtokavian dialect (shto).
• There is a tonal rising and falling accent in Croatian, which makes it sound in a very melodious way.
• There are eight universities in the world where the teaching is in Croatian. They are situated in the cities of Zagreb, Split, Rijeka, Osijek, Zadar, Dubrovnik, Pula and Mostar.
