Arabic and RTL, built properly
Most Arabic websites are English websites with the direction flipped. That is exactly where they break.
Arabic is not a translation layer. It changes reading direction, typography, number and date formatting, and the order in which a person scans an interface. A build that treats it as a switch produces a site that technically renders and quietly loses trust.
I am a native Arabic speaker and I ship bilingual products as one codebase, in one deployment, with both languages held to the same standard.
What actually breaks in Arabic builds
- Half-mirrored layouts
- Direction set on individual components instead of the document root, so the navigation mirrors but filters, progress steps and dashboards keep their English logic.
- Icons pointing the wrong way
- Arrows, back buttons and progress indicators carried over unflipped, so the interface argues with itself on every screen.
- Latin type doing Arabic work
- Arabic set in a typeface with no real Arabic glyphs, or at Latin sizing and line height, which reads as thin and cheap no matter how good the copy is.
- Numbers, dates and currency
- Formatted with English conventions inside an Arabic interface — small on its own, and immediately noticed by the reader.
- A thinner Arabic version
- Fewer sections and shorter copy than the English page. Readers register it as an afterthought; search engines treat it as the weaker page.
- Untranslated edges
- Form validation, empty states and error messages left in English because they live in code rather than in the content files.
How I build them instead
- One content file per language
- Copy lives in per-language content files — form labels and validation messages included — so both languages are built from the same source instead of Arabic trailing behind English.
- Logical properties, not left and right
- Spacing and alignment are written as start and end, so a single stylesheet serves both directions correctly instead of being patched with direction overrides.
- Arabic typography as its own system
- Arabic typefaces, sizes and line heights chosen independently of the Latin scale, because the two do not share optical weight.
- One codebase, one deployment
- Both languages ship together. There is no separate Arabic site to fall out of date behind the English one.
- Correct language signals
- Per-page canonical and hreflang, plus lang and dir on the document, so search engines serve the right language to the right reader.
Shipped in production
- A national remote-employment portal for the Saudi government — thousands of active users across multiple roles.
- A bilingual crowdfunding platform serving Arabic and English donors.
- A bilingual retail and wholesale store, Figma through checkout, with every brand detail intact.
- A bilingual digital guide running at a national public exhibit.
What a bilingual build costs
Bilingual delivery is scoped, not bolted on. Say in the inquiry that the build needs Arabic and English and the scope is written that way from the start instead of being retrofitted — which is what makes Arabic versions end up thinner than English ones. Tiers and what each includes are on the services page.
See services and pricingBuilding for Arabic-speaking users?
Tell me the idea and the budget. You get a fit-or-no-fit answer within 48 hours, in Arabic or English — your choice.