In Croatian (the same goes for Serbian and Bosnian), "publicist" is someone who writes on social and political issues in newspapers and books - basically a journalist. A publicist in English is someone hired to do PR work for a client and get them on TV, into print etc. Same as "publicity agent".

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Note added at 2003-02-17 02:31:54 (GMT)
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How about \"reklamni agent\"?

http://www.vecernji-list.hr/ARHIVA/DVD/DVD-93.html
http://www.vecernji-list.hr/ARHIVA/DVD/KINO-34.html
http://student.fizika.org/xfhr/index.php?page=arhiva.php

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Note added at 2003-02-17 19:43:54 (GMT)
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I respectfully disagree with walz\'s comment below. For one thing, \"nakladnik\" is a publiSHER, not a publiCIST.

But there\'s more. Dictionaries such as Merriam Webster tell you nothing about the frequency of the various meanings words have. That\'s why if you look under \"gay\" in Merriam-Webster, you get \"happily excited: MERRY\" as its first meaning and \"HOMOSEXUAL\" only as its last.

This is where dictionaries such as the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English come in. They are based on living language corpora and give you good indications of how words are actually used TODAY. E.g. if you look under \"piracy\" in Longman, you\'ll find \"the illegal copying and sale of books\" etc. as its first meaning and \"the crime of attacking and stealing from ships at sea\" as its second meaning. This simply means that nowadays the word \"piracy\" is used much more in the first sense.

Longman provides only one meaning for \"publicist\": \"someone whose job is to make sure that people find out about a new product, film, book etc or about what a famous person is doing\" Reason: that\'s what the word really means today. I have personally never seen the word \"publicist\" used in English with any meaning other than the last one mentioned by Merriam-Webster (press agent).

Indeed, if you google the word \"publicist\", I bet that 99 times out of 100 it won\'t have anything to do with international law or public affairs. Try googling a string like \"Tom Cruise\'s publicst\" and see what you get.


This is how things stand. Of course, it\'s always possible that the asker really needs one of those obsolescent meanings of the word \"publicist\" (expert in international law, journalist, etc.) If \"press agent\" is what they need, Bujas gives you: \"namještenik zadužen za publicitet\". This is not a good translation because \"namještenik\" is somebody\'s employee and a \"publicist\" is basically somebody who is self-employed. I\'ll stick with \"reklamni agent\".


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Note added at 2003-02-17 19:46:29 (GMT)
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I respectfully disagree with walz\'s comment below. For one thing, \"nakladnik\" is a publiSHER, not a publiCIST.

But there\'s more. Dictionaries such as Merriam Webster tell you nothing about the frequency of the various meanings words have. That\'s why if you look under \"gay\" in Merriam-Webster, you get \"happily excited: MERRY\" as its first meaning and \"HOMOSEXUAL\" only as its last.

This is where dictionaries such as the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English come in. They are based on living language corpora and give you good indications of how words are actually used TODAY. E.g. if you look under \"piracy\" in Longman, you\'ll find \"the illegal copying and sale of books\" etc. as its first meaning and \"the crime of attacking and stealing from ships at sea\" as its second meaning. This simply means that nowadays the word \"piracy\" is used much more in the first sense.

Longman provides only one meaning for \"publicist\": \"someone whose job is to make sure that people find out about a new product, film, book etc or about what a famous person is doing\" Reason: that\'s what the word really means today. I have personally never seen the word \"publicist\" used in English with any meaning other than the last one mentioned by Merriam-Webster (press agent).

Indeed, if you google the word \"publicist\", I bet that 99 times out of 100 the results won\'t have anything to do with international law or public affairs. Try googling a string like \"Tom Cruise\'s publicst\" and see what you get.


This is how things stand. Of course, it\'s always possible that the asker really needs one of those obsolescent meanings of the word \"publicist\" (expert in international law, journalist, etc.) If \"press agent\" is what they need, Bujas gives you: \"namještenik zadužen za publicitet\". This is not a good translation because \"namještenik\" is somebody\'s employee and a \"publicist\" is basically somebody who is self-employed. I\'ll stick with \"reklamni agent\".