Blog, Presentations, 5 min read
Arabic and bilingual decks: getting right to left right
Translating a deck into Arabic is not enough. Layout, fonts, numbers, charts and the software all need to work right to left. Here is what to check.
Many companies in the Gulf and the wider Arab world present in two languages. A company profile goes to a government client in Arabic and to an international partner in English. A board deck is presented in English but the appendix needs Arabic. A conference talk has Arabic slides with English subtitles.
The usual approach is to finish the English deck, send the text to a translator and paste the Arabic back in. The result almost always looks wrong. Text sits on the wrong side, bullets point the wrong way, the font swaps to something generic, and numbers jump around inside sentences. Arabic is not just a different language. It is a different reading direction, and the whole layout has to follow it.
Mirror the layout, not just the text
Arabic reads right to left, so the eye starts at the top right of the slide. That means the layout should mirror. Titles align right. The logo usually moves to the opposite corner. Image and text pairs swap sides, so the text leads on the right. Process arrows and timelines run from right to left.
Not everything flips. Photos should not be mirrored, because faces, text in signs and products will look wrong. Logos stay as they are. Charts are a judgement call, which we cover below. The rule of thumb is to flip the structure and the direction of flow, but leave real world images and brand marks untouched.
Choose fonts that support Arabic properly
Many Latin brand fonts have no Arabic characters at all. When you type Arabic into a text box set in one of them, PowerPoint quietly falls back to a default font. It works, but it looks nothing like your brand.
Pick an Arabic typeface on purpose and pair it with your Latin one. Look for a family that has a similar weight and feel, and test both at the same sizes, because Arabic often needs a slightly larger point size to read as comfortably as Latin text. Arabic also has tall ascenders and deep descenders, so line spacing that works for English can make Arabic lines collide. Give it more room.
If the deck will be edited by your team, make sure the Arabic font is installed on their machines or embedded in the file. Otherwise every edit risks a fallback font sneaking in.
Text length changes
Arabic and English rarely take the same space. Depending on the content, the Arabic version can come out shorter or longer than the English, and headlines that fit on one line in English may wrap in Arabic. Leave room in your layouts rather than designing every text box to the exact size of the English copy.
It also helps to translate with the layout in mind. A good translator, or better, a bilingual copywriter, will adapt a headline so it fits and still reads naturally, rather than translating word for word.
Numbers and mixed text
This is where bilingual decks most often break. When an Arabic sentence contains English words, brand names or numbers, the software has to work out which parts run left to right inside a right to left line. If the paragraph direction is not set correctly, punctuation ends up at the wrong end and numbers appear in the wrong order.
Decide early which digits to use. Arabic text can use Western digits (0 to 9) or Eastern Arabic digits, and organisations differ in their preference. Pick one, use it everywhere, and check every figure in the final file against the source. Percentages, currencies and dates are the usual trouble spots.
Charts and diagrams
Charts need a deliberate decision. Some organisations mirror everything, so the time axis on a line chart runs from right to left. Others keep charts left to right because the audience is used to reading financial charts that way. Both are defensible. Mixing the two in one deck is not.
Diagrams and process flows should follow the reading direction. Step one sits on the right, arrows point left. Icons with a direction, such as arrows, back and next buttons or progress bars, should flip too.
One deck or two
There are three common ways to handle a bilingual deck.
- Two separate decks, one in each language, with matching layouts mirrored. This is the cleanest for presenting and the easiest to read.
- One deck with both languages on each slide, Arabic on the right and English on the left. Useful for printed handouts and some government audiences, but it halves the space for content.
- One main language with the other as a short subtitle on each slide. Works for events where most of the audience reads one language.
For most business decks we recommend two separate decks built from the same master template. It keeps each version clean and makes updates easier.
Set up the software properly
PowerPoint handles right to left text well, but only once an Arabic editing language is enabled in Office's language settings. That adds right to left paragraph buttons and Arabic proofing. Google Slides shows right to left controls when a right to left language is turned on in your Google account settings. Keynote supports Arabic too, and follows the language settings on the Mac.
Whatever tool you use, build the Arabic master slides with right aligned placeholders and right to left paragraph direction set at the template level. Then every new slide starts correctly instead of being fixed by hand.
Always get a native reader to check
The final step matters most. Have a native Arabic reader go through every slide before it goes out. They will catch broken letter joins, wrong word order around numbers, awkward line breaks and phrases that are correct but sound translated. It takes an hour and saves a lot of embarrassment.
If you need a deck built properly in Arabic or in both languages, see how we approach Arabic presentation design. We work in PowerPoint, Google Slides and Keynote, and we can build the master template so your team can keep both versions consistent.