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The Republic of Serbia is a landlocked country in Central and South-eastern Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central part of the Balkan Peninsula. Serbia is bordered by Hungary to the north; Romania and Bulgaria to the east; the Republic of Macedonia and Albania to the south and Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro to the west. The capital is Belgrade.

Serbia is a member of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and the Council of Europe, and is an associate member of the European Union.

For centuries, shaped by cultural boundaries between East and West, a powerful medieval kingdom – later renamed the Serbian Empire – occupied much of the Balkans. The Serbian Empire collapsed after wars with the Ottomans and Habsburgs beginning in the 16th century which captured its territories. Modern Serbia emerged in 1817 following the Serbian revolution. Later, it retook territories lost to the Ottoman Empire, such as Kosovo, Raška and Vardar Macedonia. Formerly an autonomous Habsburg crown land, Vojvodina proclaimed its secession from Austria-Hungary in November 1918 to unite with the Serbia, preceded by the Syrmia region.

The current borders of the country were established following the end of World War II, when Serbia became a federal unit within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Serbia became an independent state again in 2006, after Montenegro left the union that formed after the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1990s.

In February 2008, the parliament of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. Serbia's government, as well as the UN Security Council, have not recognized Kosovo's independence. The response from the international community has been mixed.

• The country is intersected by several major navigable rivers: the Danube, Sava, Tisa, Timiş and Begej all of which connect Serbia with Northern and Western Europe: via the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal and North Sea route
• Eastern Europe: via the Tisa, Timiş, Begej, Danube and Black sea route
• Southern Europe: via the Sava river

The largest Serbian cities are Belgrade and Novi Sad and are major regional Danubian harbours.

The northern third of the country is located within the Central European Pannonian plain. The eastern part is on the Wallachian Plain. To the southeast, the Balkan Mountains meet the Rhodope Mountains. The Šar Mountains of Kosovo form the border with Albania.

Over one quarter of Serbia's overall area is covered by forest.

The Serbian climate varies between a continental climate in the north, with cold winters, and hot, humid summers with well distributed rainfall patterns, and a more Adriatic climate in the south with hot, dry summers and autumns and relatively cold winters with heavy inland snowfall. Differences in elevation, proximity to the Adriatic Sea and large river basins, as well as the exposure to the winds account for climatic differences. Vojvodina has a typical continental climate. South and Southwest Serbia are subject to Mediterranean influences. Winters are quite harsh in Sandžak because of the mountains which encircle that plateau.

Serbia has 5 national parks:

• Fruška Gora
• Kopaonik
• Tara
• Đerdap
• Šar Mountains

In November 1945, the Constitutional Assembly proclaimed the abolition of the Serbian-led monarchy without a popular referendum and banned the royal family from returning to the country. The new communist dictatorship was imposed, with Serbia as one of 6 federal units of the new state -"Second Yugoslavia," the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (“SFRJ”). The Republic was led by Josip Broz Tito, an ethnic Croat, until his death in 1980. Lazar Koliševski, a Macedonian, became President briefly upon Tito's death and was followed by others who also held office briefly as the SFRJ slowly dissolved. In 1989, the League of Communists of Serbia selected Slobodan Milošević to become President of Serbia. Milošević was controversial in Yugoslavia because he opposed Kosovo's autonomy and because his rise to power through the anti-bureaucratic revolution was done through mass protests which pushed out the leadership of the autonomous provinces and also the republic of Montenegro which installed politicians allied to Milošević. Milošević also aggravated the situation in post-Tito Yugoslavia by alleging that certain politicians in Yugoslavia were anti-Serb. His pressure to change the constitution to limit Kosovo's autonomy and endorsing a one-member-one-vote system in the Yugoslav League of Communists’ congress which would give a numerical majority to the Serbs, damaged relations in the League of Communists which collapsed along republican lines. With Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia- Herzegovina all working to secede from the SFRJ, and no official leadership of the SFRJ from 1991 to 1992, being President of Serbia was essentially the same as being President of Yugoslavia.

By 1992, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia- Herzegovina had all declared independence from Yugoslavia, resulting in the collapse of the SFRJ and the outbreak of war. In response, Serbia and Montenegro formed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (“SRJ”). The Serbian government initially supported the Serbs of Croatia and the Bosnian Serbs in the Yugoslav wars fought from 1991 to 1995. As a result, sanctions were imposed by the United Nations, which led to political isolation and the economic decline of the SRJ.

In 1995, the Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris, France. This agreement ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the war in Croatia. For the time being, the SRJ was officially at peace.

Between 1998 and 1999, Serbia's official peace was broken when the situation in Kosovo worsened with continued clashes in Kosovo between the Serbian and Yugoslavian security forces on one side and the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (“KLA”) on the other. What became known as the Kosovo War prompted "Operation Allied Force." This operation included aerial bombardment of Serbia by NATO forces. Bombings continued for 78 days. At negotiations held on the border between the Republic of Macedonia and the SRJ, between NATO spokesperson Mike Jackson and SRJ officials speaking on behalf of Milošević, it was agreed that Milošević would order the withdrawal of all SRJ security forces, including the military and the police, and agree to have them replaced by a body of international police. The agreement upheld Yugoslavian (later Serbian) sovereignty over Kosovo but replaced the Serbian government of the province with a UN administration, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). NATO also agreed to end its demand to station NATO troops across the whole of the SRJ. This had been one of its demands at the Rambouillet negotiations prior to the bombing campaign.

In September 2000, the opposition parties claimed that Milošević committed fraud in routine federal elections. Street protests and rallies throughout Serbia eventually forced Milošević to concede and hand over power to the recently formed Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). The DOS was a broad coalition of anti-Milošević parties. The fall of Milošević led to the end of the international isolation Serbia suffered during the Milošević years. Serbia's new leaders announced that Serbia would seek to join the European Union. In October 2005, the EU opened negotiations with Serbia for a Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA), a preliminary step towards joining the EU.

From 2003 to 2006, Serbia has been part of the "State Union of Serbia and Montenegro." This union was the successor to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ).

In May 2006, Montenegro held a referendum to determine whether or not to end its union with Serbia. The results showed 55% of voters in favour of independence. This was just above the level required by the referendum.

In June 2006, following the referendum in Montenegro, the National Assembly of Serbia declared the "Republic of Serbia" to be the legal successor to the "State Union of Serbia and Montenegro." Serbia and Montenegro became separate nations. However, the possibility of dual citizenship for the Serbs of Montenegro is a matter of the ongoing negotiations between the two governments. The President of Serbia is Boris Tadić, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (DS) was re-elected with just over 50% of the vote in the second round of the Serbian presidential election held on February 4, 2008.
Serbia had held Parliamentary elections on January 21, 2007. The right-wing Serbian Radical Party claimed victory, but no party has won an absolute majority. Following last-minute negotiations on the part of the DS and DSS political parties, an agreement was reached on the make-up of the country's new government on 11 May 2007 between the DS, DSS and G17 Plus.

On March 13, 2008 the Serbian government collapsed when President Boris Tadic dissolved parliament and called early elections for May 2008 citing the growing rift between himself and nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica over membership in the EU and Kosovo's Independence. The government's collapse came less than a month after the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo unilaterally proclaimed independence from Serbia, which considers the territory its historic heartland.

With a GDP for 2008 estimated at $82 billion ($11 thousand per capita) the Republic of Serbia is considered an upper-middle income economy by the World Bank. The GDP growth rate shows increases of 6% to 7.5% and as such is the fastest growing economy in the region.

The recovery of the economy still faces many problems, among which unemployment, high export/import trade deficits and considerable national debt are key. Serbia has been occasionally called a "Balkan tiger" because of its recent high economic growth rates, which averaged 6 % (over the past three years), with FDI at record levels.

Serbia grows about one-third of the world's raspberries and is the leading frozen fruit exporter.

There are 2 international airports in Serbia: Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport and Constantine the Great Airport.

The national airline carrier is Jat Airways and the railway system is operated by Serbian Railways.

Tourism in Serbia is mostly focused on the villages and mountains of the country. The most famous mountain resorts are Zlatibor, Kopaonik, and the Tara. There are also many spas in Serbia, one the biggest of which is Vrnjačka Banja. Other spas include Soko Banja and Niška Banja. There is a significant amount of tourism in the largest cities like Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš, and rural parts of Serbia like the volcanic wonders of Đavolja varoš, and cruises along the Danube, Sava or Tisza. There are several popular festivals held in Serbia, such as the EXIT Festival, proclaimed the best European festival by UK Festival Awards 2007 and the European Association of the 40 largest festivals in Europe, and the Guča trumpet festival. 2 million tourists visited Serbia in 2007.

Serbia is one of Europe's most culturally diverse countries. The north is culturally "Central European" the south is rather more "Oriental": both regions have influenced each other.

The Byzantine Empire's influence on Serbia was perhaps the greatest. Serbs are Orthodox Christians with their own national church—the Serbian Orthodox Church. They use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, as a result of Eastern and Western influences. The monasteries of Serbia, built largely in the Middle Ages, are one of the most valuable and visible traces of medieval Serbia's association not only with the Byzantium and the Orthodox World, but also with the Western Europe that Serbia had close ties with back in the Middle Ages. Such buildings account for most of the 8 World Heritage sites in Serbia.

Translation projects undertaken in Serbian include web site content, sales and marketing material, documentation requirements for engineering and manufacturing.

Total Language Solutions are translation specialists in DTP, print ready and electronic forms of material, integrating text and diagrams and more besides into and out of Serbian.

Total Language Solutions are translation experts in the relevance of text, drawings, colours and layout presentation and localisation to meet consumer expectations and norms, without causing offence.

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