Arabic Translation and Localization Services
El Turco localizes products for Arabic-speaking markets from the Gulf to the Maghreb. Native linguists choose the right register for each market and native testers check right-to-left builds before release.
- Languages
- 19
- Languages
- Vetted Native Linguists
- 700+
- Vetted Native Linguists
- Localization Tasks / Year
- 100K+
- Localization Tasks / Year
- Founded
- 2016
- Founded
Enterprises, language service providers and AI teams use El Turco for Arabic translation and localization services in Modern Standard Arabic and the main regional dialects. Native Arabic linguists translate under ISO 17100 and post-edit machine translation under ISO 18587. Project managers in our Istanbul production office run each job and our headquarters is in London. Every project starts with one decision: Modern Standard Arabic, a regional dialect or a mix of both.
Arabic localization touches the whole product, not only the text. The script runs right to left, letters change shape by position, nouns and verbs carry gender and the plural system has six forms. Arabic files are handled in RWS Trados, memoQ, Phrase or XTM. Every delivery passes through What's Wrong?, our own QA tool, before native testers review the right-to-left layout.
Dialects and variants
Which Arabic do we translate into?
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the shared written standard for business, government, news and most software across the Arabic-speaking world. Spoken Arabic differs strongly by region, so marketing, games and conversational products often read better in a dialect or in MSA with regional wording.
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)
The default for software UI, legal, technical, finance and life sciences content. One MSA version can serve several markets.
Gulf Arabic (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman)
Used for consumer marketing, e-commerce and games aimed at Gulf audiences, often as MSA with Gulf wording.
Levantine Arabic (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine)
Common in entertainment, advertising and conversational content for the Levant.
Egyptian Arabic
Widely understood through film and television, and a frequent choice for consumer campaigns in Egypt.
Maghrebi Arabic (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia)
Differs most from MSA and mixes in French loanwords. Business content for North Africa is usually MSA.
Script and layout
Writing system and right-to-left layout
Arabic is written right to left in a cursive script with no uppercase letters. Most letters connect and change form at the start, middle or end of a word. Short vowels are optional diacritics that everyday text leaves out.
- Mirroring: navigation, menus, progress bars and back arrows flip to the right-to-left direction. Media playback controls, logos, charts with a time axis and clock faces usually stay as they are.
- Bidirectional text: Latin product names, URLs, code and numbers inside Arabic sentences run left to right. Without Unicode direction marks, punctuation and placeholders jump to the wrong end of the line.
- Digits: Western digits (0-9) are standard in the Maghreb and common in Gulf digital products, while Eastern Arabic digits (٠-٩) appear in Egypt, the Levant and much Gulf print. The choice is set per locale, such as ar-SA, ar-AE, ar-EG or ar-MA.
- Fonts and line height: Arabic needs a font with full shaping support and more vertical space for diacritics and descenders, so Arabic text set at the English font size often looks cramped or clipped.
- Dates and calendars: dates run day, month, year. The Hijri calendar appears next to the Gregorian one in religious and government contexts. Month names differ between the Levant and Egypt or the Gulf.
Localization pitfalls
What makes Arabic localization different?
Concrete issues our Arabic linguists and engineers check for on every project.
Six plural forms
Arabic uses the CLDR categories zero, one, two, few, many and other, including a dedicated dual. Strings built on English one/other logic produce wrong Arabic, so plural keys need all six ICU forms.
Gender in second-person strings
Verbs, adjectives and pronouns change for a male or female reader. "You have been invited" needs a gendered form, so we agree a default with the client, request gendered variants or rephrase the string to avoid direct address.
Disconnected or reversed letters
Some game engines and UI frameworks do not shape Arabic by default, so letters appear separated and in the wrong order. We flag rendering issues in the first LQA pass.
Placeholders and agreement
Numbers, names and item labels inserted into a sentence must agree in gender and number with the surrounding words. Concatenated fragments rarely work, so linguists need full strings with notes on what each variable contains.
Register and dialect choice
MSA reads as formal and neutral, while dialect reads as personal and local. A banking app in dialect can feel careless and a game in strict MSA can feel stiff, so register is decided per product and per market.
Text length and truncation
Some English terms need a descriptive phrase in Arabic and the script needs more height on screen. Buttons, tabs and notifications need room for longer forms.
Cultural and regulatory review
Imagery, gestures, humor and references to religion or alcohol are reviewed for each market. Gulf product labeling and consumer rules generally require Arabic, and bilingual contracts usually state which language prevails, so legal text goes to a legal-domain linguist.
Industries
Which industries do we serve in Arabic?
Industry pages describe the workflows; each one applies to Arabic as summarized here.
Industry
Gaming & Esports
In-game text, store pages and community content with dialect choices agreed per title and in-build RTL LQA.
Industry
E-Commerce & Retail
Product catalogs, marketplace listings and seasonal campaigns for Gulf and Egyptian shoppers, with MT and human review workflows.
Industry
Technology & IT
SaaS and mobile UI, help centers and release notes, with right-to-left layout testing in each release cycle.
Industry
Finance & Fintech
Banking, payments and insurance content, including Islamic finance terms such as murabaha, sukuk and takaful.
Industry
Life Sciences
Patient-facing documents, labeling and device instructions for regional regulatory submissions.
Services
Arabic services we offer
Every service below is available in Arabic. Pricing is per-word, hourly or project-based, quoted after scoping.
Translation & Localization
TEP translation
One native Arabic linguist translates and a second edits and proofreads, following ISO 17100.
Translation & Localization
Software, website and game localization
Resource files, CMS pages and game text prepared for right-to-left display with linguistic QA.
Translation & Localization
MTPE
Arabic post-editing under ISO 18587, after an engine evaluation on a sample of your content.
Translation & Localization
Transcreation
Campaign copy and store listings adapted for Gulf, Levantine, Egyptian or Maghrebi audiences.
Translation & Localization
LQA and RTL testing
Native testers check mirroring, bidirectional text, digits, truncation and shaping in the live build.
Integrations
Continuous localization
Hub, our middleware, links your TMS or repository so Arabic strings move without manual file exchange.
Arabic services in depth
Game
Arabic Game Localization
Arabic in-game text, right-to-left UI, store pages and in-build LQA for mobile, PC and console titles, in MSA or regional dialect.
E-commerce
Arabic E-Commerce Localization
Arabic product catalogs, right-to-left storefronts, checkout and campaigns for Gulf, Egyptian and wider Arabic markets, with MTPE for volume.
Software
Arabic Software Localization
Arabic UI strings, right-to-left layout review, help content and release notes, delivered through continuous localization for SaaS and enterprise software.
AI data
Arabic AI Training Data
Arabic speech collection, transcription, text annotation, RLHF and MT corpora across MSA and the major dialects, labeled by native speakers.
AI training data
Arabic AI training data
Models trained mostly on MSA often fail on the Arabic people actually type and speak. Users switch dialects, mix in English or French and write Arabic in Latin letters with digits for some sounds (Arabizi). El Turco builds Arabic datasets that cover this reality: dialect speech collection with transcription, dialect identification labels, text annotation for intent, sentiment and entities, RLHF ranking of Arabic model responses, moderation data for regional slang and hate speech plus parallel corpora for custom MT or LLM fine-tuning. Dialect labels and annotation rules are agreed with your team first. Gold tasks screen annotators before production and each delivery includes an inter-annotator agreement report. A free Arabic pilot batch shows the quality before any commitment.
Related languages
Languages that regularly appear in the same project plan.
Language
Persian
Native Persian (Farsi) linguists for right-to-left software, game, e-commerce and marketing content, plus Persian AI training data.
Language
Kurdish
Kurmanji and Sorani translation, localization and AI training data, with the right script for each audience and right-to-left testing for Sorani.
Language
Turkish
Our home language: native Turkish linguists in Istanbul for software, game, e-commerce and marketing content, plus Turkish AI training data.
FAQ
Arabic translation FAQ
Should we localize into Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect?
Modern Standard Arabic is the right choice for most software, legal, finance and technical content because readers across all Arabic markets accept MSA. A dialect suits marketing, games and conversational products aimed at one region. El Turco often recommends MSA with regional vocabulary for Gulf e-commerce and agrees the register per market during scoping.
Which Arabic dialects does El Turco cover?
El Turco covers Modern Standard Arabic plus Gulf, Levantine, Egyptian and Maghrebi Arabic. Linguists are assigned by dialect and by subject domain, so a Saudi marketing campaign and an Egyptian game are handled by different native teams. The same dialect coverage applies to AI training data projects such as speech collection and moderation datasets.
Do you test the right-to-left layout of our Arabic product?
Yes. Arabic LQA at El Turco includes native testers who review the build itself, not only the strings. Testers check mirrored navigation, bidirectional text with Latin names and numbers, digit style, truncation, line height and letter shaping. Issues are logged with screenshots and a suggested fix, so developers can correct layout problems before release.
How do you handle Arabic plurals and gender in software strings?
Arabic software strings need all six CLDR plural forms and a plan for gendered address. El Turco asks developers to expose zero, one, two, few, many and other as ICU plural keys. For second-person strings we agree a default gender, request gendered variants or rewrite the text to avoid direct address. The decision goes into the style guide.
Which languages can you translate into Arabic?
El Turco translates into Arabic from English, German, French, Chinese and Turkish. Arabic is also a source language: we translate Arabic into English and into Turkish, which helps Gulf companies working with partners in Türkiye. Other pairs are quoted case by case after we confirm linguist availability for the subject domain.
Is machine translation reliable for Arabic?
Machine translation for Arabic handles general MSA reasonably well but still makes gender, agreement and dialect errors that native readers notice. El Turco runs Arabic MTPE under ISO 18587, starting with an engine evaluation on your own content. For marketing, legal text and UI strings with variables we recommend human translation with a second reviewer.
How do I start an Arabic localization project?
An Arabic localization project starts with the contact form: share the content type, target markets, volume and timeline. Enterprise teams can ask for a free pilot, while LSPs get a free test translation of up to 300 words. We then agree the register, glossary, file formats and RTL testing scope. Pricing is per-word, hourly or project-based, quoted after scoping.
Planning Arabic Content?
Tell us what Arabic content you have, how much of it and when it is due. We reply with a scoped plan and can start with a free pilot or a free 300-word test translation.