Growing Business in The Middle East – Overcome the Challenges with Arabic Translations

The Middle East, for over five to six decades, has been one of the largest manufacturers of opportunities for visionary entrepreneurs sensing them and making every necessary effort to grow.

Culturally and geographically, The Middle East covers a vast geographical area. On the eastern front, it includes the UAE, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, and Iraq. Further, towards the northwestern part, you have countries like Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and Cyprus. Besides, the region also covers a few countries from Africa, such as Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt.

But the Middle East, as we know, is predominantly an Arabic market. So, alongside a business strategy that defines your uniqueness in the Middle Eastern market, you need an appropriate linguistic strategy helps you connect with the target audience, and opens access to a vast Arabic speaker base of over 400 million people across all the above countries.

Nevertheless, English to Arabic translation is not as apparent or straightforward. They involve a range of complexities that need linguistically, culturally, and technically correct solutions. So, if you want to capitalize on all the business opportunities in the Middle Eastern region, know some of the challenges of Arabic translations, and overcome them to ensure translational accuracy.

7 Things to Consider while Translating from English to Arabic

Arabic’s expanse includes countries touching bordering the eastern Atlantic Ocean across the west coast of Africa to countries on the coast of the Indian ocean. Thousands of miles, millions of people, and, therefore, many linguistic complexities to deal with for every business owner who aspires to make it big in the Arab world! What are the challenges? Let us proceed to look at them.

1. Every country has its Version of Arabic

Arabic is a multi-dialect language. Every country that speaks Arabic has its version (written as well as verbal), and which constitutes the first complexity while translating content into Arabic. For instance, Egyptian Arabic is different from that of the Algerian.

The one translation fits all approach doesn’t work while dealing with Arabic, particularly when you target a specific region, or country, or a market. Your business must speak the version of the Arabic that the people in the country speak. Besides, you must also ensure that you apply the right spellings, use the correct alphabets to ensure local accuracy.

Alongside the use of appropriate phrases and local words to help people relate with your content also is necessary. It enables you to establish connections with the local prospects.

To ensure regional accuracy, and relevance, you must team up with a company that has a pool of regional Arabic resources that know what works in the local territory, and what doesn’t.

2. English Words that don’t have an Arabic Equivalent

Another significant area of concern is that many English words, especially the modern ones that don’t have an Arabic equivalent. And, even if you try to translate forcefully, or precisely transliterate, your young prospects, perhaps, will not understand it, or only wonder about the meaning.

For instance, let us consider the word selfie, a modern word that evolved with the emergence of mobile phones. So, it is evident that selfie won’t have an Arabic equivalent or the one that sounds as relevant.

If you transliterate it, the resultant is صورة ذاتية (Surah Thatiya). Now, the word may sound linguistically correct. However, it doesn’t connect as much. It may compel your reader to wonder, Surah Thatiya!?

The moral of the story is, you’ll come across many such untranslatable English words that don’t have an Arabic equivalent. The solution here is to know the context and use words that your target audience would understand and relate with.

3. An Extensive Set of Vocabulary

Arabic is a Semitic language with over 12 million words compared to English, which has only a million. Besides, while English has 26 alphabets, Arabic has 28. So, your Arabic translator must possess a broader set of vocabulary to ensure the appropriate use of words, to avoid repetition, and to deliver a rich content experience to the prospects.

An experienced Arabic translator with a proven track record and the expertise in translating for a wide range of contexts, documents, and businesses must constitute your choice. It will help you leverage the full range of vocabulary of the language relevant to your business.

4. The Length of Words and Sentences

Arabic sentences and words turn out to be lengthier than the English ones. It is one of the most common characteristics of languages belonging to the Semitic branch. Besides, Arabic words require more height than those of languages written in the Latin script.

Although a challenge, you need not live with it. A team of expert Arabic translators and technical specialists will help you plan the page layout well, and fit the translated content well within the page limit, without letting it extend beyond the page limit, or appear cluttered to ruin the reading experience. Planning the page layout, and size according to the script, will make it visually appealing.

5. Machine Translations are yet to Evolve in Arabic Translations

Given the complexities and variations in regards to the characters, morphology, and syntax of the Arabic language, machine translations yet don’t prove as useful as expert manual translations do.

MTs may help you save some a lot of time, but if you want to connect with the target audience, you need an expert solution by your side – a human translator relating to the emotions of fellow humans. Automated Arabic translations solutions are yet emerging. Hence, the only solution is to partner with an expert Arabic translation company that resolves all these challenges.

6. The Difference in English and Arabic Sentence Structures

While English follows the Subject-Verb-Object order, Arabic uses verbal and nominal (verb-less) structures to create sentences. Besides, it even rearranges the sequence as Verb-Subject-Object.

It is quite common, and obvious to commit the mistake of translating English sentences into Arabic the way they are written in English. However, that doesn’t work in Arabic. Translators must apply some creativity while adapting verbal sentences to nominal, and nominal to verbal by shuffling the order of the words to ensure the sentence retains the contextual meaning.

7. Understanding the Middle Eastern Culture

While everything else may turn out to be perfect, correct, and accurate, a word or two, probably considered a taboo in the Middle Eastern culture, may spoil the show! Hence, Arabic translators and localization experts must have comprehensive knowledge about the Middle Eastern culture, in terms of what goes well with them, what they welcome, and what they don’t, etc.

Hire Filose for the Most Appropriate and Accurate Arabic Translations

Dealing with Arabic translations all alone, or without an expert Arabic translator and localization expert may not only prove cumbersome but also lead to mistakes of varying degrees. It may make the content unrelatable and spoil your reputation, thereby leading to unacceptance of your brand in the local market.

Hiring a local Arabic translator keeps you away from a lot of such linguistic, cultural, and technical challenges. Native resources are adept at the local dialect, and hence offer better quality and more accurate translations. Translators that understand your business well, and also the psychology of the target audience prove even more useful from the viewpoint of building native connections.

As one of the leading Arabic translation and localization companies, Filose continues to help companies of varying sizes, and businesses from a wide range of industries. Some of them include banking, healthcare, legal, automobile, manufacturing, eLearning, and eCommerce.

The company engages in English to Arabic translations , and from several other languages into Arabic for a broad array of offline, and online documents. It includes training manuals, product information, catalogs, brochures, marketing collaterals, etc.

Filose’s network comprises native Arabic translating and localizing resources spread across various Arabic-speaking countries. It helps the company deliver accurate translations and content that’s localized to help your business to enable better and stronger bonding with the native audience.

If you too wish to leverage the several business opportunities in the Middle East, Arabic translation and localization is one of the first steps you must take. Filose proves a comprehensive partner in this regard. contact to Filose’s experts on +91-20-49007800 or email to sales@filose.comfor an in-depth discussion of your requirement.

Ref. No – FLB06221019