By THE UNKNOWN BRAND · Editorial standards

Published 2026-08-01 · Updated 2026-09-06

One strategy does not require one source sentence. English and Arabic can make the same promise naturally without mirroring every word.

01Kuwait Army02Gulf Bank03Midana04Warba Bank05Dabdoob06Boursa Kuwait07Palmy08World Defense Show09Hyundai10Kellyville

In brief

• One strategy does not require one source sentence. The strongest bilingual work usually reads as though it was written twice, not translated once.
• W3C defines localisation as adapting content to the language, cultural and other requirements of a target market — number formats, dates, symbols and legal requirements included.
• Arabic is cursive: a letter takes a different form depending on how it joins its neighbours, so a pipeline without shaping emits different glyphs.
• W3C’s Arabic layout requirements record European digits across Western Arabic-speaking countries and Arabic-Indic digits across Eastern ones. Neither is more correct.
• A terminology register proves what was agreed. It does not prove anyone applied it. That is the sign-off owner’s job.

Start from the decision, not the English paragraph

Before anyone writes, agree the audience, promise, proof, action and non-negotiable terminology. Each language then expresses that structure naturally. One strategy does not require one source sentence, and the strongest bilingual work usually reads as though it was written twice, not translated once.

The workflow in order

Step 1 · One shared brief

The brief records the decision layer: who the work is for, what it promises, and what evidence supports the promise. It also records what the reader should do and which terms are fixed. Both writers work from this document, not from each other’s drafts alone.

Step 2 · Source-language draft

Draft first in whichever language the argument was developed in. In many Gulf organisations that is English, but it does not have to be. The source is simply the version where the thinking is most exact. It should be approved for meaning before adaptation starts.

Step 3 · Adaptation, not translation

The second-language writer works from the brief and the intent of the source draft, not from its word order. Idiom, rhythm, sentence length and even the order of proof can change if the promise, facts and required terminology survive intact. Reserve literal translation for the few lines where exact equivalence is legally required. A back-translation check is useful there, not everywhere.

Adaptation is not a softer word for translation. W3C defines localisation as adapting content to the language, cultural and other requirements of a target market. Its list runs well past the words: number formats, dates, symbols, icons, legal requirements. That is the real scope of this step. The Arabic version inherits the promise and the facts. It does not inherit the English sentence boundaries.

Back-translation is the usual defence, and it is a narrow one. A clean back-translation proves the Arabic carries the same claim as the source. It does not prove the Arabic reads as though a person wrote it, that the register suits the placement, or that the line survives its font. Use it where a contract or a regulator fixes the wording. Used everywhere, it quietly turns your Arabic writer back into a translator.

Adaptation is writing the second-language version from the shared brief and the intent of the source draft, not from its word order. Idiom, rhythm, sentence length and even the order of proof can change if the promise, facts and required terminology survive intact.

Step 4 · Typography and RTL QA

Arabic is reviewed inside the real artwork, at final size, on the destination platform. Type, direction and layout problems are invisible in a text document and obvious in a story frame.

Step 5 · Review and sign-off

Each category of content has a named owner whose approval closes it. The workflow ends when both language versions are signed off in their final format, not when the copy deck is finished.

Choose the Arabic register

Formal Arabic, neutral Gulf language and dialect do different jobs. The brand should define where each is acceptable before campaigns start, because the choice affects trust as much as comprehension. Regulated claims may require formal language even when the surrounding social copy is lighter.

Arabic-specific pitfalls

These are the recurring failure points we check for. None is exotic; all of them ship regularly.

• Mirrored layouts: flipping the whole composition is both too much and not enough. Directional cues such as back arrows, progress chevrons and carousel order should mirror; logos, photographs, clocks and most product shots should not. Decide element by element rather than applying one global flip.
• Numeral choice: Western Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) and Eastern Arabic-Indic numerals (١, ٢, ٣) are both legitimate. Pick one per market and per brand, then hold it consistently, especially for prices, dates and phone numbers that appear in both language versions.
• Hamza and diacritics: some fonts and platforms seat the hamza badly or drop diacritics entirely. Test the actual campaign strings in the actual licensed font, not in a system default that will never ship.
• Tatweel (kashida): stretching letterforms to justify a line or fill a space can break letter shapes in some fonts. Avoid tatweel in logos, UI labels and any text that may be re-rendered by another system later.
• Letter joining: tools without proper Arabic shaping can output disconnected letters or reversed character order. Any export pipeline must be tested with real Arabic before delivery, including subtitle files, video title tools and image generators. The failure looks fine to anyone who cannot read it.
• Mixed-direction lines: a sentence that combines Arabic with an English product name or a number can flip brackets, misplace punctuation and reorder words. Check every mixed line individually in the final artwork.

Tatweel (kashida) is the stretching of Arabic letterforms to justify a line or fill a space. In some fonts it can break letter shapes, so the guide keeps it out of logos, UI labels and any text another system may re-render later.

Design in RTL early

Review hierarchy, line length, numerals, punctuation, arrows, carousels, tables and mixed-language product names in the artwork itself, early in the design process. Mirroring a finished English layout at the end creates exactly the avoidable errors listed above, at the moment there is least time to fix them.

Most bilingual defects are ordering and shaping defects, and neither is visible where the copy is written. Arabic is cursive: a letter takes a different form depending on how it joins its neighbours. A pipeline without shaping does not merely look wrong — it emits different glyphs. Direction is then resolved separately again. The Unicode bidirectional algorithm holds characters in logical order and works out display order at render time, resolving bracket pairs as units. Two renderers can disagree about the same file.

So the evidence you want is a render, not a paste. A screenshot from the design file proves the string was correct in that application, on that machine, that day. It does not prove the export, the platform's own text engine, or a re-render by a media partner will keep the letters joined and the order intact. Check the file you are actually shipping.

The Unicode bidirectional algorithm holds characters in logical order and works out display order at render time, resolving bracket pairs as units. Two renderers can disagree about the same file.

Keep a terminology register

Store approved product names, Arabic spellings, transliterations, legal phrases, calls to action and the terms that must remain in English. The register is what keeps month six consistent with month one, and it reduces drift across suppliers who never meet each other.

Two entries earn their place ahead of the rest. The first is numeral family. W3C's Arabic layout requirements record European digits in use across Western Arabic-speaking countries such as Algeria and Morocco. The same document records Arabic-Indic digits across Eastern ones such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Neither is more correct. The defect is a price in one family on the poster and the other in the caption. The second is the list of terms that stay in Latin script: product names, plan names, legal entities. That is the decision a new supplier guesses at first.

A register proves what was agreed. It does not prove anyone applied it. That is the sign-off owner's job, which is why the register and the approval map work better as one document than two.

A terminology register is the stored list of approved product names, Arabic spellings, transliterations, legal phrases, calls to action and the terms that must remain in English. It is what keeps month six consistent with month one.

Assign final language owners

A copywriter can propose the line, but product, legal or communications teams may own specific terminology. The approval map should identify whose decision closes each category, so that a disagreement about a word ends with an owner rather than a longer thread.

An approval map identifies whose decision closes each category of content, so that a disagreement about a word ends with an owner rather than a longer thread.

Final QA

• Read both languages in the final format, not in the copy deck.
• Check meaning, not only spelling.
• Confirm dates, prices, numerals and units.
• Test subtitles and safe areas on the destination platform.
• Confirm the Arabic and English calls to action reach the same destination.

The order of this workflow is the point. Language quality problems are cheap at the brief stage, affordable at the draft stage and expensive in a finished film. Moving the Arabic decisions forward is what makes the two versions equals rather than an original and its shadow.

Sources

Every source below was opened and its quoted wording checked against the live page. A source we could not re-fetch was dropped, not softened. Where a rule could not be confirmed from the body that issues it, this guide says so rather than describe it from memory. Editorial responsibility sits with the studio, not an individual author. Found a moved link or a wrong citation? Email hello@theunknownbrand.com with the URL. We will correct the page and its modification date.

1. Unicode Consortium — UAX #9, Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm — The post’s 'Mixed-direction lines' pitfall: that Arabic mixed with Latin names or numbers can flip brackets, misplace punctuation and reorder words, and must be checked in the final artwork.
2. W3C — Arabic & Persian Layout Requirements (W3C Group Draft Note, 02 October 2025) — Two claims the post already makes: that Western and Eastern Arabic-Indic numerals are both legitimate and must be chosen per market; and that tatweel/kashida stretching is a letterform operation that can misbehave.
3. Unicode Consortium — The Unicode Standard, Core Specification, Chapter 9 (Middle Eastern Scripts) — The post’s 'Letter joining' pitfall: that tools without proper Arabic shaping output disconnected letters, and that tatweel is a stretching mechanism rather than a spacing one.
4. W3C Internationalization — Localization vs. Internationalization — The post’s thesis and Step 3: that the second-language version is an adaptation covering more than words — numerals, dates, symbols and legal requirements — not a word-order translation.
5. Google — Android Developers, Support different languages and cultures — The post’s 'Mirrored layouts' pitfall — decide element by element rather than applying one global flip — and the instruction to test real Arabic strings rather than a default.

Frequently asked questions