Arabic website translation and localisation
Arabic website translation handled as one site rather than a folder of files: pages, navigation, interface text, forms, error and empty states, landing pages and metadata, with each element translated closely where the English carries and rewritten where the Arabic needs to behave differently. Terminology is fixed once and applied everywhere.
Most Arabic websites fail in the small text rather than the paragraphs. Buttons, labels, forms and headlines are where visitors decide whether the site was built for them.
What website Arabisation involves
A website is not a document. It is hundreds of short, repeated, highly visible strings that have to agree with each other.
Body copy is usually the easiest part. The harder part is everything around it: menu labels, buttons, form fields, validation messages, placeholder text, tooltips, confirmation screens and the empty states nobody exports for translation. Visitors meet those at the exact moment they are trying to do something, so an awkward label costs more than an awkward paragraph.
Arabic also behaves differently inside a layout. Sentences run longer or shorter than the English they replace, headlines wrap where the design did not expect it, buttons stretch, and stacked taglines lose their rhythm. Some sections therefore have to be written for the design rather than translated into it.
Reading direction is part of the same problem. Right-to-left affects navigation order, icon direction, form alignment and the way a visitor scans a page, and copy decisions have to take that into account rather than assume the English layout still applies.
What is covered, element by element
Every category on a site is reviewed on its own terms, because each has different constraints of length, tone and repetition.
Covered across the site
- Page copy: home, product, service, about and contact pages
- Navigation: menus, submenus, breadcrumbs and footer links
- Interface text: buttons, labels, tabs, filters and states
- Forms: field names, hints, validation and confirmation messages
- Landing and campaign pages, including calls to action
- Metadata: Arabic page titles, meta descriptions and alt text
- A terminology list applied consistently across the whole site
Which parts translate and which need rebuilding
Informational pages usually translate closely. Product detail, service descriptions, policies, help content and factual company information carry into Arabic with their meaning and structure intact, and translating them faithfully is the right call.
Homepage headlines, hero lines, taglines, calls to action and campaign landing copy frequently do not. These are written to a rhythm and a word count, and the effect disappears in a faithful rendering. They are rebuilt in Arabic to serve the same purpose in the same space.
Interface microcopy sits in between. It usually translates, but it has to be decided once and then repeated exactly, because the same button appearing with three different Arabic labels is more damaging than an imperfect choice applied consistently.
Typical project types
Common briefs
- A first Arabic version of a corporate or product website
- Repairing an existing Arabic site that reads as machine output
- Arabic landing pages for a campaign or market entry
- Interface and product copy for a web application
- Adding Arabic to a site being rebuilt or redesigned
How the project runs
The site is inventoried first, so nothing is discovered late: pages, repeated components, interface strings, forms, metadata and anything hidden behind a state or a flow. Terminology and register are then agreed against the audience the site actually serves.
Drafting follows per element, with the treatment chosen for each. The final stage is reading the Arabic site the way a visitor would, following the main journeys from arrival to enquiry or purchase, because problems in navigation and microcopy only appear in sequence.
Delivery fits how the team works, whether that is a structured file, a content management system or a developer handover with the terminology list attached.
For a fuller treatment of the reasoning behind this approach, the guide on Arabising a website rather than simply translating it goes through each element in detail.
Why the UAE and Gulf context matters
A site aimed at readers in the UAE and the Gulf has to match local expectations of formality, entity naming and how organisations present themselves. Register that feels natural in one market can read as casual or as stiff in another, and the safest default for corporate sites is Modern Standard Arabic written at a level the audience actually reads.
Practical detail matters too: how company names, legal forms, job titles, place names and numbers are handled, and whether Arabic or English forms are used for terms your audience already knows in English.
Common questions
Send the site, or the pages that matter most
A link and a short note on the audience is enough to scope the work and identify which parts should be translated and which need rebuilding in Arabic.