An Accent on Accuracy

The highest quality translations, brisk turnaround schedules, competitive rates, and sharing of our knowledge, are all requisites for ALT‘s success. The complete and accurate translation of your company’s communications is vital to your success. That’s why ALT is obsessed with providing the best translators for YOUR project. High-quality translations are the product of a highly talented and experienced translation team with expertise in your industry. ALT puts all the pieces together to make it happen.

Why choose us for English to Arabic or Arabic to English translation?

Advanced Language Translation’s Professional Arabic translation services utilize only native speakers to ensure quality and precision translations for your target audience. The ability to translate from/into Arabic requires not only a strong knowledge of the Arabic language, but also the diverse cultures of the Arabic-speaking world, as well as an understanding of the target audience, purpose of the source text and technical aspects of written Arabic.

When doing business in Arabic, professional, human translation is a must. Do not expect to close a business deal or impress your clients with spotty software translation. Only through human translation, edited and customized to your target audience, can your meaning be honestly conveyed and your audience not be offended.

We are proud of our excellent reputation for reliable and high quality Arabic to English and English to Arabic translation services. We have assembled teams of translators from around the world, with an array of skills and specialties and can custom fit the knowledge and strengths of our teams to your specific projects. To demonstrate our commitment to quality and our dedication to our clients, we offer free consultations and provide an industry leading 180-day warranty on translation!

We provide quick and easy custom quotes for your Arabic translation and localization needs.

Need to get the “gist” of Arabic?

Although professional translation is highly recommended for any business, legal or sincere correspondence in Arabic, sometimes it may be ok to use machine translation (via software or the internet) to get the gist of an e-mail or web page. By no means is machine translation an acceptable substitute for professional translation—the technology is not there yet. But it is great for quickly getting the general idea of an article, e-mail, or web site.

Interesting Facts about the Arabic Language

Arabic is the sixth mostly widely spoken language in the world; the five before it are Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish and Russian. It is a Semitic language sharing origins with Hebrew and Amharic. It is the language of daily life for people in Morocco to southwestern Iran. Arabic is also the liturgical language of Muslims in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Although the Arabic language can be viewed as a unifier of the diverse societies of North Africa and the Middle East, disparate dialects can make it virtually impossible for someone from Egypt, let’s say, to understand another from Morocco. Differences abound still when comparing the daily language of urban, rural and nomadic people. However, the Arabic used in the press and the mass media is standardized, enabling mass communication throughout the region. Arabic is rare because it is a diglossia, a language that exists almost as two separate languages. Colloquial Arabic is learned at home and is the first language learned by most people. This form varies widely from place to place in the Arabic speaking world. In public and educational life, Modern Arabic is learned and used. This form of the language is based on Quranic, or Classical Arabic. Provinces in Arabia had different dialects of Arabic. Because the prophet Mohamed belonged to the Quraish tribe the Quran (Koran) was written in Quraish Arabic. Therefore, Quranic Arabic (which is originally Quraish Arabic) became the language of the press, TV, radio, official writings, teaching, etc. Quraish was an urban tribe, living in Mecca. It was one of the biggest and richest Arab tribes in Arabia. This form of Arabic is used in most public discourse and for written communication, while Colloquial Arabic is used orally in less formal situations.

History of the Arabic Language

Arabic is a member of the Semitic sub-group of Afro-Asiatic languages. The first recorded Arabic writing appeared during the 4th century A.D. Prior to the rise of the Islamic religion, Arabic was used by inhabitants of the Arabia peninsula.

Arabic was the language of people who moved from Arabia to Iraq and the Levant countries around 3000 BC. Also, in what is now southern Iraq, the al-Manathira kingdom, which was a pre-Islamic Bedouin tribal dynasty and aided Sasanian Iran in its struggle with the Byzantine Empire, fostered early Arabic poetry.

In the 6th century AD, it was widely spoken in the Ghassanid Kingdom located in modern-day Syria. This kingdom was a prominent Byzantine ally. From its strategic location in portions of modern Syria, Jordan and Palestine, it protected the spice trade route from the southern Arabian Peninsula and acted as a buffer against the desert Bedouin.

Also, prior to the rise of Islam, Arabic was used for centuries along the African coast opposite from Yemen.

Thanks to the expansion of Islam following Mohamed’s death in 632, it became the dominant language throughout the Middle East, North Africa and into Central Asia. Today it is the language of daily life of over 246 million people and is the language used in mosques by over 1 billion Muslims throughout the world.

Written Language

The Arabic alphabet consists of 28 consonants and can be written without vowels, since vowels are inherent to the consonant characters. The Arabic alphabet has also been adopted by non-Semitic languages such as Modern Persian, or Farsi, Urdu, Malay, and some West African languages. Arabic, like Hebrew, is written in right to left order. In actuality, it is a bi-directional language, since numbers can be written in left to right order and whenever Roman script is used. Another interesting fact is that the numerals used when writing Arabic are typically not written in “Arabic” numerals at all, rather Arabic uses Hindi numerals. However, Arabic numerals as used in most western languages are sometimes used in Arabic writing.

Arabic Language Statistics

• Approximately 246 million people speak Arabic as their first language.
• Arabic is the liturgical language of nearly 1 billion people worldwide.
• Approximately 12 million Arabic speakers have access to and use the Internet,
  which represents over 1.6% of the global online population.
• Literacy throughout the Middle East varies greatly country to country, ranging from
  40.5% (Iraq) to 91% (Jordan).

Translation Issues with Arabic

Advanced Language Translation Inc has extensive experience with the in and outs of the Arabic Language and we have a long and flawless record of success with complicated Arabic translation projects. Here are some of the common issues with English to Arabic translation and desktop publishing that we have learned:

• Arabic translation typically expands 30% in size from English.
• Not all applications support Arabic text and great care must be taken when using
  Arabic in complex layouts. Some applications use different encodings, which
  complicates data transfer from one application/OS to another. For example, it is
  not possible to send/receive Arabic emails or IMs using AOL software. Due to
  encoding/font difficulties and the bi-directional nature of Arabic, simple operations,
  such as copying, pasting or printing, can become a nightmare for a novice.
• Displaying Arabic text in applications that don’t support it is virtually impossible.
  Specialized expertise and techniques are required. Typically, applications localized
  specifically for use with Arabic must be used.
• There are certain hyphenation and line breaking rules that have to be followed.
  Although in most cases the rules are straightforward, some words can pose serious
  difficulties if your desktop publishing/word processing department does not have the
  right expertise.
• For typesetting, an Arabic keyboard (onscreen or a separate keyboard) is necessary,
  unless the person typesetting can do it using a blind method. Before starting to typeset,
  Arabic support must be installed and activated. An Arabic keyboard layout can be
  viewed on the Microsoft website.
• imilingual web pages containing Arabic raise display problems in addition to input
  problems. Newer browsers have built-in support for bi-directional languages, enabling
  the text to flow correctly from right to left. However, older browsers may not have any
  support and will garble the Arabic text. We recommend using Microsoft’s Internet
  Explorer, version 5.0 or higher and Netscape version 6.0 or higher. Be sure all
  Arabic support is installed before trying to browse Arabic language pages.
• Desktop publishing applications will need to support bi-directional text (not just right–
  to-left), in order to support Arabic. Arabic will typically contain a mix of right-to-left and
  left-to-right text flow. Lack of support for this feature will disrupt the grammar and
  cause misspellings.

Arabic Language Vital Information

Speaking Population: 246 Million
Where Spoken: Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan have Arabic as their primary official language. Arabic is also the Islamic liturgical language worldwide.
Writing Systems: Arabic alphabet
Code Pages: Windows-1256, win-1251 CP-1256
Unicode Supported: Yes
Common Phrases: (phonetic pronunciations in parentheses)
Arabic: (Arabi)
Hello: (Marhaba)
Good-bye: (Ma’a al Salama)
Please: (Etha Samaht)
Thank you: (Shukran)
English: (Englizi)
Yes: (Na’am)