Arabic vs English: 10 Key Differences Every Translator Navigates

Arabic and English could hardly be more different. Arabic is a Semitic language — related to Hebrew and Amharic — while English is Germanic. They diverged thousands of years ago and developed in completely different directions. For translators working between the two, these differences create daily challenges that require deep expertise in both languages.

Whether you're commissioning Arabic translation for the first time or simply curious about how these two languages compare, here are 10 key differences that every Arabic-English translator navigates.

1. Right-to-Left vs Left-to-Right

The most immediately visible difference: Arabic is written and read from right to left, while English goes left to right. This affects everything from book binding (Arabic books open from what English readers would consider the "back") to website design (Arabic websites mirror their layouts, with navigation on the right).

For translators, the challenge isn't just the text direction — it's handling bidirectional content. When an Arabic sentence contains an English brand name, a number, or a URL, those elements remain left-to-right within the right-to-left text. Getting this bidirectional rendering correct in documents, websites, and apps requires specialist expertise. Our website translation and app localisation teams handle RTL adaptation daily.

2. Connected Script vs Discrete Letters

English letters stand independently — each "a" looks the same whether it's at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. Arabic letters connect to each other in a flowing script, and most letters have four different forms depending on their position: initial (beginning of word), medial (middle), final (end), and isolated (standing alone).

For example, the letter "ba" (ب) looks different in each position: بـ (initial), ـبـ (medial), ـب (final), ب (isolated). This connected script is what gives Arabic its beautiful calligraphic quality, but it also means that Arabic text cannot simply be typed letter-by-letter the way English can — the software must handle letter joining automatically.

3. Root-Based Morphology

This is perhaps the most fundamental structural difference. English builds words by adding prefixes and suffixes to base words: "write," "writer," "writing," "rewrite," "unwritten." Arabic uses a root system based on three-consonant roots, with vowel patterns woven between them to create meaning.

The root k-t-b (ك-ت-ب) relates to writing. From this single root: kitab (book), katib (writer), maktaba (library), maktub (written/destiny), mukatabat (correspondence), iktitab (subscription). A skilled Arabic reader can encounter an unfamiliar word and deduce its general meaning from the root — something impossible in English.

For translators, this means Arabic text is often more concise than English. A single Arabic word might require three or four English words to convey the same meaning, which is why Arabic-to-English translations often expand by 20-30%.

4. Grammatical Gender Everywhere

English has largely abandoned grammatical gender — we use "the" for everything and only distinguish gender in pronouns (he/she) and a few words (actor/actress). Arabic assigns gender to everything: every noun, every adjective, every verb, and even numbers.

"The big house" translates differently depending on whether you're using the masculine al-bayt al-kabir or the feminine al-ghurfa al-kabira (the big room). Verbs change form based on the gender of the subject: "he wrote" is kataba but "she wrote" is katabat. Even "you" is different for a man (anta) and a woman (anti).

This creates particular challenges for machine translation, which frequently gets Arabic gender agreement wrong — one of the reasons human review is essential for Arabic translation.

5. No Capital Letters

Arabic has no concept of capitalisation. There is no distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters. This means Arabic cannot use capitalisation to signal proper nouns, sentence beginnings, acronyms, or emphasis the way English does.

When translating from English to Arabic, information conveyed by capitalisation must be handled differently — through context, punctuation, or explicit clarification. When translating from Arabic to English, the translator must determine which words should be capitalised based on meaning and context, since the source text provides no visual clues.

6. Formal vs Informal: Two Different Languages

English has registers — we speak differently in a job interview than with friends — but the vocabulary and grammar remain essentially the same. Arabic has a much more dramatic split between formal Arabic (MSA/fusha) and spoken dialects (ammiya).

An Arabic news anchor speaks in a language that is fundamentally different from what they use at home. The vocabulary, grammar, and even pronunciation change. This is called diglossia, and it means that translators must choose not just "Arabic" but which level of Arabic is appropriate. Legal documents use MSA. A subtitled interview with a Jordanian farmer uses Levantine dialect. Marketing copy for Saudi consumers might blend MSA with Gulf vocabulary.

7. The Definite Article: One vs Three

English has three articles: "a," "an," and "the." Arabic has one: al- (ال), the definite article, which attaches directly to the front of a noun. There is no indefinite article — the absence of "al-" makes a noun indefinite. So kitab means "a book" and al-kitab means "the book."

Simple enough, but "al-" interacts with the following letter in complex ways. With "sun letters" (about half the alphabet), the "l" of "al-" assimilates into the next letter: "the sun" is not al-shams but ash-shams. This matters for transliteration and for proper pronunciation in interpreting.

8. The Dual Number

English has singular and plural: one book, two books, many books. Arabic has three: singular (one), dual (exactly two), and plural (three or more). The dual has its own special suffix and verb conjugation.

"One book" = kitab wahid. "Two books" = kitaban (dual form). "Three books" = thalatha kutub (plural form — and note that the word for "book" itself changes to a completely different plural pattern). Arabic has over a dozen plural patterns, and many must simply be memorised.

For software localisation, the dual number is a common source of bugs. Most apps are designed for singular/plural only, and adding Arabic support means handling three number categories in every string that displays a count.

9. Two Number Systems

Here's a fact that surprises most English speakers: the "Arabic numerals" we use in English (0, 1, 2, 3...) are actually Western Arabic numerals, adapted from their original form during the medieval period. The Arab world itself uses two systems:

• Eastern Arabic numerals (٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩) — used in the Middle East (Egypt, Gulf states, Levant, Iraq)
• Western Arabic numerals (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) — used in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia)

When translating documents, the translator must know which numeral system the target audience expects. Financial documents for Saudi Arabia use Eastern numerals; documents for Morocco use Western numerals. Some documents, particularly in the Gulf, use both systems in different contexts.

10. The Impact on Translation

These differences mean that Arabic-English translation is not a simple word-for-word substitution — it's a complete restructuring of how information is organised and presented. A professional Arabic translator must navigate all ten of these differences simultaneously while preserving the original meaning, tone, and intent.

This is why Arabic translation typically costs more than translation between closely related European languages, why machine translation struggles more with Arabic than with French or Spanish, and why choosing a qualified, native-speaking translator matters so much.

At Arabic Translation UK, all our translators are native Arabic speakers who have mastered both languages at the highest level. Get a quote for your Arabic-English translation project.