Arabic style guide¶
This supplement covers general written Arabic; the Saudi Arabia page covers that regional edition, and the Arabic localization guide gives the compact rules for the FontLab interface. It is not a complete grammar. Apply the shared localization review and house voice; adaptations are acknowledged in credits.
Local usage¶
Use contemporary, clear Modern Standard Arabic that stays professional without becoming stiff or colloquial. A text for every Arabic-speaking region avoids dialect words and terms that only one country uses. Rebuild English sentence order when necessary: Arabic prefers a verb or a verbal noun first, and joins short sentences with و, ثم or لكن where English starts a new one. Keep the chosen form of address consistent within a surface.
Address and grammatical gender¶
Arabic marks gender in the second person: انقر addresses a man, انقري a woman. Do not infer the reader's gender from English you. The verbal noun (masdar) avoids the question, which is why Arabic macOS, Windows and Adobe applications name a command حفظ (saving) and not احفظ (save!). Use it for commands, options and descriptions of what a control does.
Where a sentence must address the reader, use the masculine singular, the convention of the Arabic platforms: يمكنك تغيير الإعدادات لاحقًا. Forms such as يمكنك and the possessive ـك read the same for both genders in unvocalized text; prefer them, or يرجى with a masdar, to an imperative when the sentence allows it. Do not write a slashed double form, and do not switch to the plural to avoid the choice.
Things have gender too. A plural of things takes feminine singular agreement: الخطوط المحددة, الملفات غير مسجلة. A verb before a feminine subject is feminine: تمت إزالة الخطوط, تعذرت إضافة الملف.
Meaning and word choice¶
Translate the intent, not the word order. Three calques mark a machine draft: قم بـ with a masdar where a plain verb or masdar serves (قم بفتح الملف for افتح الملف), الخاص بك for every your (Arabic usually takes the definite article or the suffix ـك), and من قبل for an English by agent, where an active verb reads better.
One Arabic word can stand for several English ones. خط is a font, a line and a hand of writing; نقطة is a typographic point and a point on a contour; حالة is a status and a case. Use the approved term for the actual concept and keep it apart from its neighbours inside one sentence. Do not carry an office-suite sense into type: a script is a writing system, not a program, and a face is a typeface, not an interface.
Keep conditions, quantities and required actions when you split or join sentences. A shorter phrase must keep its object and its force.
Definiteness and the genitive construct¶
Arabic has no indefinite article. A bare noun is indefinite (ملف); ال or a genitive construct (idafa) makes it definite (الملف, ملف الخط). The first term of an idafa never takes ال, and nothing may come between its terms: an adjective follows the whole construct and agrees with the noun it describes, عائلة الخط التالية. A Latin name ends the construct instead of splitting it: الجداول البيانية لبرنامج Excel, not جداول Excel البيانية.
A class word in a construct is usually plural: مكتبات الخطوط. When two actions share an object, the object follows the first and a pronoun follows the second: إنشاء التقارير وإرسالها, not إنشاء وإرسال التقارير. An adjective is negated with غير, which then carries no article itself: الخطوط غير التابعة للنظام.
Message states and variables¶
Choose wording for what actually happened. A label, progress and a result are different messages.
| Meaning | Arabic wording |
|---|---|
| Action label | حفظ الملف |
| Instruction | احفظ الملف. |
| In progress | يجري حفظ الملف… |
| Completed | تم حفظ الملف. |
| Failed attempt | تعذر حفظ الملف. |
| Present limitation | لا يمكن حفظ الملف. |
These rows are constructed on the patterns of Font Book and the Microsoft Arabic style guide. A question ends with the Arabic question mark: هل تريد إزالة الخطوط المحددة؟
Check every substituted value. An adjective or a verb cannot agree with a value whose gender is unknown. The masdar pattern keeps the agreement inside the fixed text (تم تنزيل {name}); a generic noun before the value does the same (الملف {name} غير صالح). Prepositions that attach to the next word (بـ, لـ, كـ) and the article must not be glued to a variable or a Latin name: choose في, إلى, من or على, or detach the particle (يبدأ بـ {name}).
Arabic count phrases need six forms, and the counted noun changes its case and number:
| Count | Phrase |
|---|---|
| 0 | لا توجد ملفات |
| 1 | ملف واحد |
| 2 | ملفان (after a preposition or verbal noun: ملفين) |
| 3 to 10 | 5 ملفات |
| 11 to 99 | 25 ملفًا |
| 100, 101, 102 | 100 ملف |
The cycle repeats inside each hundred: 103 takes the plural again, 111 the accusative singular. Zero, one and two are written in words, without the digit. Use the product's plural mechanism and test each form in context. A standalone label such as عدد الملفات: 5 avoids the inflection but cannot replace a count inside every sentence. Follow messages and variables.
Spelling and vocalization¶
Write without short-vowel marks. Add a single mark only where a word would be misread, typically a passive (عُثر, يُحفظ) or a participle (مُدار). Keep the tanween of an indefinite accusative, written before the alef: تلقائيًا, ملفًا. Both placements exist in print; this guide follows the one Apple's and Qt's Arabic use. Do not mark every doubled consonant with a shadda.
Spell the hamza by rule: a cutting hamza in إضافة, أضف, إلى; a joining alef in افتراضي, استيراد, انقر. Distinguish ة from ه and ى from ي at the end of a word. These are spelling errors, not regional variants, and they break search.
Arabic has no capital letters. Where English capitalization marks an interface label inside a sentence, quote the label instead. Do not letter-space Arabic, and do not lengthen a word with the tatweel (kashida) to fill a line.
Names and loans¶
Product names, file formats, technical identifiers and code keep their Latin spelling, without the Arabic article and without transliteration: Python, not بايثون. Put a generic Arabic noun before the name so that the sentence can carry gender, case and definiteness: تطبيق FontLab, ملف AFM, تنسيق OpenType. Names of languages and writing systems are Arabic: العربية, اللاتينية. Prefer an established Arabic term to a transliterated English one, and an established loan to an invented coinage; record the choice in the term table rather than deciding it sentence by sentence.
Punctuation¶
Use the Arabic comma ،, semicolon ؛ and question mark ؟ in Arabic sentences, with no space before and one space after. The period, colon, parentheses and exclamation mark are the common ones. A Latin comma stays inside code, an identifier or a value the reader must type.
Arabic macOS and Windows set an interface label or a name in straight double quotation marks: انقر فوق "طباعة". Typographic and angle quotation marks appear in Arabic books; do not mix the systems on one surface. Keep the ellipsis the source uses. Keep a hyphen or a dash from the source as that character.
Numbers and keyboard wording¶
Use Western digits (0–9) in interface and technical text; Microsoft's Arabic guide and Adobe's Arabic documentation do, and coordinates, Unicode values and version numbers must match what the program prints. Arabic-Indic digits (٠–٩) with their own decimal and grouping marks are correct Arabic and the default of some regional locales, Egypt among them; they belong to locale-formatted output, not to typed text. Do not mix the two systems in one product. Write a percentage as the digits followed by the sign, with no space: 50%. A version number keeps its periods: الإصدار 4.2.
Key names stay in Latin script as printed on the keys: Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Command, Option, Enter, Esc, Tab. The space bar is مسافة and the arrow keys are سهم لأعلى, سهم لأسفل, سهم لليمين and سهم لليسار. Do not transliterate a key name into Arabic letters, and do not replace Command with Ctrl across platforms.
Interface review¶
Follow bidirectional text and scripts and typography when reviewing Arabic alongside Latin names, paths and numbers. Store every string in logical order and add no invisible directional characters by default; a sentence that begins with an Arabic word gives the layout engine the right base direction. Check the running interface with real substituted values, including a filename with punctuation. Visual order must not change the underlying filename, placeholder or numeric limit.
A mirrored interface does not mirror its subject. Left and right that describe a glyph, a sidebearing or a text direction keep their literal meaning; identify a control by its name and not by its side of the window.
Test complete count messages and expanded text. Do not infer Arabic plural behavior from English singular/plural pairs, or judge reading order from an isolated string in a translation editor. Have a proficient Arabic reviewer resolve wording and regional terminology in context.
FontLab terminology decisions (2026-10-04)¶
Follow the canonical FontLab glossary, including its approval status and contextual notes. The current choices are:
| Concept | Wording |
|---|---|
| OpenType lookup | إجراء |
| Fusion, using the fallback Welder | لحّام |
| FontAudit, visible name | فونت أوديت |
| Pin, a named point in an element | دبوس |
For OpenType lookup, the default is the translation of procedure. Retain a different term only with strong OpenType-specific evidence; the explicit German, French, Polish and Russian decisions take precedence. Ordinary search, dictionary lookup and code keywords are separate senses. Preserve literal lookup, lookupflag, LookupList and identifiers in code. Keep individual rules distinct from the procedures that group them.
Use the FontAudit name above in visible interface text and prose; preserve FontAudit in code and identifiers. In non-Latin scripts it is a phonetic transliteration, including Chinese. A proposed glossary entry remains proposed; this table does not confer native-team approval.
Keep marked and unmarked menu labels consistent after accounting for Qt mnemonic & and appended shortcuts. In Dimensions and Glyph Window preferences, aim for labels no longer than 120% of the source; preserve meaning when that target is impractical. Omit redundant font or colour wording when context supplies it. TTH options may omit the verb “use” and abbreviate TrueType hinting as TTH. Help may be longer, but quoted interface labels must match the final UI.
FontLab Rapid tool¶
FontLab names this tool رابيد. The name stays recognizable in the interface and Quick Help; it does not mean an ordinary fast or quick action. Use the canonical TS spelling and translate the surrounding grammar, as in الرسم بأداة رابيد. The contrast classifications containing English rapid use the ordinary adjective instead. See the localization guide for the current terminology and source-version checks.
FontLab Quick Help control names (2026-10-05)¶
Match the control's TS context when quoting a label. The Chat panel is الدردشة, while its MainWindow menu entry is المحادثة. Smart Filters preferences use المرشحات الشاطرة; a spelling from another filter dialog does not replace that label. In OpenType help, use إجراء for a lookup and تجميع for compilation. Avoid repeating the same noun in a heading such as “Lookup action” when الإجراء identifies the control clearly.
Keep the canonical expanded بكسل لكل em in TTH and CBDT controls. The Change UPM dialog instead uses UPM. Technical prose may explain the units; a generic abbreviation rule must not override the visible control. Preserve existing helpful vocalization, including تُنشأ, يحمّله and أكّد.
Use أداة الساق when older help calls the Stem tool “Thickness tool”.
Stroke thickness remains السماكة; it is a property, not a second tool.
Keep the full advance-width term عرض المحرف distinct from the short
العرض alias in explanatory metric-formula legends. Preserve spec,
lsb, rsb, width and the expressions themselves.
The English help can contain source errors. The duplicate-glyph .sups
button is Superscript (نص علوي), despite its incorrect Subscript help
heading. Do not reproduce the second-left-class error in “Kerning both”;
the second class is right. Record such conflicts for coordinated source
repair instead of changing correct Arabic to match an incorrect sentence.
Style values shown from font data remain Regular, Normal, Plain,
Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. The Names, Masters and Instances controls
set these values directly; do not translate them merely because an ordinary
prose adjective has an Arabic equivalent. In contrast, the Inspector's OT
class selector translates Simple, Ligature and Mark as بسيط,
حرف مركب and علامة. Check the control's code as well as its TS entry.
For font-dimension fields, Subscript is الأحرف السفلية and Superscript is النص المرتفع. Those labels differ from the suffix-creation buttons. Font coordinates are بوحدات الخط; a numeric units-per-em setting is قيمة UPM. Do not describe an ordinary coordinate as a number of units per em.
The Measurements menu is قياسات; the panel is القياسات. Keep this context distinction in paths. Text case commands also differ: GW_Text uses تحويل إلى أحرف صغيرة, تحويل إلى أحرف كبيرة and تكبير أوائل الكلمات, while Bar_Text and GlyphWindow have their own catalog labels. Stroke caps use طرف and أطراف; linked-cap controls use ربط الطرفين.
Check inherited help headings against the action mapping. Some rotation, snapping and stroke controls carry copied headings for unrelated controls. Record confirmed source defects and translate the supported behavior; a matching English tooltip alone does not establish what the control does.