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What to Consider When Comparing Arabic Translation Services

Arabic is the fifth most commonly spoken language on earth, and is the primary language of nearly two dozen countries in the Middle East and North Africa. If you or your business works in those countries, communicating effectively in Arabic is critical.

A professional Arabic translation service will have the skills and experience to accurately translate your copy from English to Arabic. Contact us today to learn more.

What four key factors should you consider when you’re looking for Arabic translation services?

Read vs. spoken content

How you intend to use your content will determine how it is translated into Arabic. If your content is formal and will be read and not spoken, it can be translated into Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the standardized literary version of Arabic language. Almost all Arabic-speaking countries use MSA in newspapers, books, religious TV programs, and other official content.

In contrast, if your content is intended to be spoken in Arabic, the translation becomes more challenging. Although all Arabic-speaking countries use MSA for formal writing, the dialects for spoken Arabic vary from country to country. For content that will be used in more informal contexts, such as television, radio, commercials, and some websites, translations should be tailored to the intended audience’s regional dialect.

Grammatical structure

Arabic has a complex sentence structure that may seem unusual to native English speakers. Because of this, literal translations from English into Arabic (and vice versa) can often sound strange and stilted. A professional Arabic translation service will employ translators who are familiar with both languages will be able to recast English content into correct, natural-sounding Arabic.

Right-to-left script

While English is written and read from left to right, Arabic is written and read from right to left. Written Arabic needs more than basic translation. An experienced Arabic translator, however, will have the linguistic and technological know-how to translate and format right-to-left script.

Gendered terms

Like French and Russian, Arabic assigns gender to nouns. So while an English speaker would use the neuter pronoun it to refer to objects, an Arabic speaker classifies everything—from chairs to tractors—as he or she.

A skilled Arabic translator will know the gender of nouns and ensure agreement with the other parts of speech in a sentence, such as adjectives, articles, pronouns, or verbs.

Work with a professional Arabic translation service

These are only a few of the challenges of Arabic–English translation. If you are looking for professional Arabic translation services for your business, get in touch with us today. Our team of highly trained translators are fluent in Arabic dialects from around the Middle East and North Africa and experienced in working with organizations around the globe.

Get a translation quote

Professional human translation for any language, any topic