A website in Arabic and English can reach both local and international customers. Done badly, it feels foreign to both. These are the problems we see most often when clients ask us to rescue a bilingual site.
1. Machine translation published as-is
Literal translation is easy to spot and it costs trust immediately. Each language should read as if it was written in that language first, with headlines adapted rather than translated word for word.
2. Right-to-left treated as an afterthought
Arabic is not just text flipped to the right. Navigation, arrows, icons, forms, sliders and tables all need to mirror correctly. A layout that works in English often breaks in small, visible ways in Arabic.
3. Fonts that do not suit Arabic
Many attractive Latin fonts have no Arabic glyphs, so browsers fall back to a default font that clashes with the design. Choose a matched pair of fonts, one for each script, with similar weight and character.
4. One URL for both languages
If both languages share a URL and switch with a button, Google usually indexes only one. Give each language its own address — for example /services/ and /ar/services/ — and connect them with hreflang tags so each audience lands on the right version.
5. SEO only in one language
Page titles, meta descriptions, image alt text and headings need writing in both languages, using the words each audience actually searches for. Arabic search terms are often not a direct translation of the English ones.
6. Mixed text that renders in the wrong order
Phone numbers, addresses, brand names and prices inside Arabic sentences can appear jumbled because of text direction. These details need deliberate handling — and they matter most on contact pages.
7. Half-translated pages
A button, an error message or a footer link left in the other language makes the whole site feel unfinished. Check every state: forms, empty pages, 404 pages, emails and the cookie banner.
A quick checklist before launch
- Read every page aloud in both languages
- Test the Arabic version on a phone, not just a desktop
- Check titles and descriptions in Google’s preview for each language
- Switch languages on every page and confirm you land on the same page
- Submit a form in each language and check the reply
Bilingual websites are our everyday work — including this one. If your site needs a proper Arabic or English version, get in touch.
