Bring your book to Serbian readers.

A translation should read like it was written

There’s a simple test for a literary translation: read a page, and if you can feel it was written in another language first, it has failed — however accurate it is.

Accuracy is the floor. What you’re really paying for is a book that reads as though it were born in Serbian. That means moving the effect of each sentence, not the words — keeping the joke funny, the rhythm intact, the tone true. Sometimes that means changing the words entirely to keep the feeling. That’s not unfaithfulness; it’s the whole craft.

The longer argument, if you want it: read “What actually matters in literary translation” in the journal.

The rule we never break: into the native language

A literary translator should always translate into their native language, never out of it. To produce Serbian that reads like literature, you need a native Serbian ear — which word sounds bookish and which sounds like the street, where a comma changes the breath of a line, what a real person would actually say.

So we work only with native Serbian literary translators who read the source language fluently. Not a marketing line — the basic condition for the work being any good. A non-native translator produces competent, slightly foreign Serbian that every native reader quietly feels is off.

One language, four markets

Serbian opens more than one country. The language is shared — with local variation — across Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia, a combined readership far larger than any single market. A Serbian edition reaches all of it.

That regional reach is exactly what we bring to authors from the rest of the world: a real house on the ground that knows how to make a book read naturally here and how to put it in front of readers across the region.

What’s included

• Native Serbian literary translators
• Foreign book → Serbian (fiction, non-fiction, poetry)
• Faithful to voice, register and style
• Second-reviewer proofread by another native reader
• Per-title glossary for consistent terminology
• Optional full production of the Serbian edition

What you receive

• Serbian translation, ready for production — Your book, in Serbian, that reads like Serbian.
• Second-reviewer proofread pass — Read in full by a second native reader who didn’t do the first pass.
• Glossary / terminology notes — So names and key terms stay consistent cover to cover.

Why the second reader matters: no translator catches everything in their own work — the eye slides over its own choices. A second native reader is where a competent translation becomes a good one. We don’t skip it.

All the way to a finished edition

Translation can be the whole job, or just the first step. Because we’re a full production house, we can take the Serbian text straight into a finished, published edition — interior layout, an original cover, print-ready files and a validated ePUB — without you managing a second supplier.

One book, one team, one voice, from a foreign manuscript to a Serbian edition on shelves and in stores.

Your manuscript stays confidential at every step. If you’d like a signed agreement before sharing it, you can generate one in seconds:

Create an NDA

Translation questions, answered

What kinds of books do you translate?

Fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Poetry is the hardest and the most rewarding — and the clearest case for a native literary translator over a literal one.

How long does it take?

By length and complexity. We give you a fixed timeline in the quote before we start.

Do you also do the Serbian edition’s cover and layout?

Yes, optionally. We can produce the full Serbian edition end to end.

Can you translate from Serbian into other languages too?

Our core service is into Serbian, by native Serbian translators. For other directions, tell us the languages and we’ll be honest about what we can do well.

Will the translation keep my voice?

That’s the entire point. We translate the effect and the voice, not word-for-word, and a second native reader checks that it still sounds like you in Serbian.