Correct Arabic translations
19/07/2012
Multi-lingual marketing is more than simply paying someone to translate your copy; you need to have an understanding of the language to ensure this gets printed correctly.
The recent error by a train company (first Capital Connect) with incorrect Arabic translation highlights this fact.
Arabic is a right to left language and when word processors of web code or design or publishing software is used you need to ensure the text part can cope with the right to left character set.
Word processors such as Word were quicker at coping with other character sets than design and publishing software, and Arabic is often the last language to get sorted.
Arabic also differs from English in that each letter can look different depending where in the word it appears. In general when a letter is at the start (right) or middle of words only use part of the letter is seen, with more of the full form being only at the end (the left) of a word. This means that Arabic words are always joined up, and this forms part of the script.
If you see a script of single characters pretending to be Arabic, then it is most likely to be written with left-to –right settings and not right to left settings. It will make no sense at all in Arabic.
Within design and publishing recognition of non latin scripts is still patchy, and most brand guidelines ignore languages such as Arabic or Mandarin. Defining a font style and size for Latin type languages and expecting this to work in Arabic or Chinese is unrealistic. In practise a larger font size is usually needed to make Arabic text readable.
Cornish WebServices provide website design, maintenance and marketing in many languages, especially Arabic, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese.
