Translation assistance

    • It is Serbian, albeit the letter shapes are sometimes very strange. Some words are also written slightly differently from the modern standard. This is the transcription as far as I've been able to decipher it:

    У ОВОМЕ МРАЧНОМ ГРОБУ ЛЕЖИ СРБИН СТОЈАН БОРОЕВИЋ УМРО 27. АУГУСТА 1910 Г. ОВАЈ СПОМЕН ПОДИЖУ БРАЋА СРБИ И ХОРВАТИ НЕКА МУ ..... ЗЕМЛА БИЛА

    "In this dark grave lies a Serb, Stojan Boroević, died on 27 August 1910. This stone was erected by brothers Serbs and Croats. Let the soil be .... to him." (The last sentence is the equivalent of "RIP" but I can't decipher the adjective used.)

    Hopefully others will chime in with corrections!
     
    Thank you so much! The letters are probably shaped differently because the person carving the tombstone was not familiar with the language.
     
    Last edited:
    I think the last sentence starts with ЛАКА, not НЕКА - "may the ... soil be light to him". The missing word could perhaps be ЦРНА "black", assuming that the stonecarver mangled the letters Ц and Н a bit.
     
    eeladvised said:
    I think the last sentence starts with ЛАКА, not НЕКА - "may the ... soil be light to him". The missing word could perhaps be ЦРНА "black", assuming that the stonecarver mangled the letters Ц and Н a bit.
    Click to expand...

    Looks very plausible, thanks!
     
    I can only get snippets ...

    The first one says "This tombstone was erected for Obrad ... he lived ... from 1910 16 July he ... by birth 1877 year, this tombstone was erected by brothers Serbs and his ..."

    The second one says "Here lies ... born 29 May 1904, died 11 April 1911, this tombstone was erected by father and mother ..."


    The third one says "Here lies in God's peace Jovan Roksandić, he died 15 November 1918, at age 35" and then something else in the last line, maybe "selo (village) ..." ?

    Out of curiosity, where are these located? The form of the letters is really strange to say the least!
     
    Thanks! I may be able to find obits or death certs with this info so I appreciate your assistance.

    They are located at Mt. Lebanon Cemetery in Lebanon, PA. There is a Serbian Orthodox Church in Lebanon and the Priest there has given up on translating them. Tried to get him to meet me at the cemetery but I was not successful. The cemeteries records are awful. Definitely a small population a hundred years ago. I'm sure the person who carved the stones was not a native Serbian speaker. Mostly I run across English and German (which I can read) tombstones.

    Could the one with the DOD of 16 July 1910 be Ogrod Guruskin? He died in a fire on that date. Obrad is close...
     
    It certainly looks like these were carved by somebody who had no idea about the language. Most of the letters look drawn, not written, if you get what I mean. Obrad Guruškov is what it says, now I see it.
     
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