For businesses in Jordan and the GCC, a bilingual website or app is usually expected. Yet many products treat Arabic as a translation layer added at the end. The result is familiar: broken layouts, awkward fonts and copy that reads like a machine wrote it.
Right-to-left is more than mirroring
Switching the text direction is only the start. Navigation, icons that imply direction, progress indicators, charts and form layouts all need to be considered. Some elements should mirror, such as arrows and step order. Others should not, such as phone numbers, media controls and many logos.
Typography deserves its own decisions
Arabic letterforms need different line heights, sizes and spacing than Latin text. A font pair that looks balanced in English can feel cramped in Arabic. We choose Arabic typefaces deliberately and tune the spacing for each language.
Write, do not just translate
- Write key messages natively in Arabic rather than translating word for word.
- Keep terminology consistent across the website, app and documents.
- Test with real users from your target market, since dialect and tone vary across the region.
Build it into the system
The most reliable approach is to make direction and language part of the design system itself: logical spacing properties, direction-aware components and content structures that hold both languages. Done this way, Arabic stops being a separate project and becomes part of how the product is built.
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