Open almost any platform that says it supports Arabic and switch the language. The words change. The menu still starts on the left. The “next” arrow points backwards. A letter-spaced label that looked considered in English is now a row of broken shapes, and every Arabic word sits a size smaller than the numbers beside it. It is technically Arabic. Nobody reading it in Cairo or Riyadh would call it finished.
That gap is the difference between a platform being usable in the Gulf and Egypt and not. So Arabic on MediaCore2 was never scoped as “translate the strings”. It ships right to left, end to end: the viewer’s site, your Studio, the emails and the phone notifications.
The layout mirrors, not just the words
Switch a site to Arabic and the whole layout turns around. Navigation, sidebars, tables and form fields mirror. Drawers slide in from the other side. Carousels scroll the way an Arabic reader expects, and even the scrolling ticker mirrors. Directional icons flip, so a “next” arrow points the way next actually is.
Knowing what not to flip is half the job. An email address, a web address and a phone number keep their own direction inside an Arabic sentence, because a reversed email address is just a broken one. Scores, prices and dates stay in the digits your audience reads.
The typeface is part of the language
Latin typefaces have no Arabic letters. Leave a browser to find some and it picks a different face on every operating system, so the same menu looks different on an iPhone and on a Windows laptop. MediaCore2 switches to a face drawn for Arabic instead.
Then there’s size. At the same nominal size, Arabic letters look visibly smaller than the Latin text beside them. So the Arabic face is scaled to sit level with it, while Latin letters, digits and punctuation keep coming from the Latin face. Your platform’s name, an email address or a price is the same size in every language — and nothing in your layout moves.
Two English habits that break Arabic
Arabic letters join to each other. The letter-spacing that makes an English label look deliberate physically pulls an Arabic word apart into disconnected shapes. And Arabic has no capital letters, so uppercase and small-caps styling have nothing to work with.
Both are handled once, centrally. Letter-spacing is dropped for Arabic. Where an English label would be set in capitals, the Arabic is set a touch taller instead, so it still reads as a label rather than a sentence. The wording you type is safe wherever you type it — a hero headline, a button, a section title.
Right to left is a layout decision and a typography decision long before it’s a translation.
Even on paper
Arabic in a printed document is two problems, not one. Each letter takes up to four shapes depending on its neighbours, and a document that doesn’t know that draws every letter on its own — in the wrong order. A two-word heading comes out as a row of reversed stumps.
Printed responses from the Forms add-on get both right: every letter shaped for its neighbours, Arabic runs set right to left, and the Latin text, digits and email addresses inside them left in their own direction.
The words stay yours
Every one of the 4,610 interface phrases can be edited in every language you’ve switched on, side by side, and the change is live immediately. Rename “Events” to “Fixtures” in the English column and choose its Arabic in the next one. Add-ons carry their own Arabic too, so the Reels or Ticketing link in an Arabic menu reads like everything around it.
The 22 automatic notifications — receipts, expiry warnings, “the event you saved is live” — go out in your site’s language, and each one has its own screen. Variables such as {plan} can sit anywhere in the sentence, which matters the moment the sentence runs the other way. The screen only offers the variables that notification actually receives and refuses to save one it doesn’t, so no customer ever gets a receipt with a raw placeholder in it. One wording drives the inbox, the email and the push.
You also decide which languages exist at all. A site running English and Arabic never shows a French option anywhere — not to viewers, not in the Studio.
How to test any platform’s Arabic
If you’re evaluating a platform for an Arabic-speaking audience, spend ten minutes on this before you read a feature list:
- Switch the whole interface to Arabic. Does the navigation start on the right?
- Find an uppercase or letter-spaced label. Are the letters still joined?
- Put a price and an email address in an Arabic sentence. Are both still readable?
- Open the staff dashboard. Is your team working right to left too?
- Trigger a receipt email and a phone notification, not just the homepage.
- Print something.
See what else your brand controls in white-label & branding, or set up language, currency & timezone.