Suri Translations began in August 2022 as a language service provider focusing on translating English-language content to Serbian, Spanish, and Russian. Later in the year, we added Hindi to our list of languages.
We later also added subtitling services to Spanish and Hindi and also transcribe English-language podcasts.
As 2022, comes to an end we did a count and realized we had completed a total of 19 projects including internal projects. We decided there had to be one more completed to finish off a great first year.
That final project was a Serbian translation of the Hindi-language short story “Shatranj Ke Khilari” or “The Chess Players” in English.
“The Chess Players” is a short story written in 1924 by Munshi Premchand, one of the greatest Indian writers who wrote in Hindi and Urdu. Set during the time of the British Rule in India, the story takes place in the Kingdom of Awadh — one of the remaining Kingdoms that was still independent…but, for how long?
The short story follows two aristocrats Mirza Sajjad Ali and Mir Roshan Ali, who seem to care not for politics or about the impending invasion by the British. Their only concern is on their daily Chess matches and trying to outwit each other on the board.
The short story is one of the most famous works of Hindi literature as are all of Premchand’s writings. It was famously adapted into a feature film by the eminent filmmaker Satyajit Ray in 1977.
To our knowledge, this great work of Indian literature hasn’t been translated to Serbian. As a result, we wanted to give it a try. We translated the original Hindi text to English and provided it as a source to our translator, Mihailo.
We trust that “Igrači šaha” will entertain Serbian readers as well as indulge their curiosity just as the original short story has for almost a century.
You can purchase “Igrači šaha” here: