Arabic websites in Bahrain: what right to left actually changes
Most Arabic websites in the Gulf were built by translating an English site and hoping for the best. You can usually tell within about four seconds of opening one.
In Bahrain a serious business website has to work in Arabic and English. Plenty of customers move between the two inside a single visit. The mistake almost everyone makes is treating Arabic as a text layer applied at the end, when right to left changes the structure of the page itself.
01Arabic is a layout change before it is a language change
Setting dir="rtl" on the page is where this starts, and it is nowhere near where it ends. Direction affects how every block sits on the page, which side navigation opens from, where a logo belongs, how a form reads, and which way a user expects to move through a sequence.
If your stylesheet is full of margin-left and padding-right, none of it flips. The page comes out looking like an English layout with Arabic words poured into it, and the eye lands in the wrong place on every screen. CSS logical properties solve this: margin-inline-start instead of margin-left, and the layout mirrors itself correctly the moment direction changes.
This is why Arabic belongs in the build from the first day. Retrofitting it later means unpicking the stylesheet rather than adding to it, which is slower and more expensive than doing it properly at the start.
02What flips, and what must never flip
Mirroring is selective, and getting the exceptions wrong is what makes a site feel amateur.
Flip the things that carry direction: navigation, sidebars, breadcrumbs, progress steps, back and forward arrows, alignment of text and headings, the side a drawer slides in from.
Leave alone the things that do not: your logo, photography, video player controls, phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, and any code or Latin brand name sitting inside Arabic copy. A mirrored logo is the single most common giveaway that nobody checked the Arabic version before launch.
03Typography is the part everyone underestimates
Arabic letterforms connect to one another, which changes the rules you are used to. Letter spacing breaks words apart and should be left at zero. Many Arabic typefaces have no true bold weight, so emphasis has to come from size, colour or a different face rather than from the bold button.
Arabic also needs more vertical room. The same point size that reads comfortably in English tends to feel cramped in Arabic, so the type usually wants a slightly larger size and noticeably more line height. Ascenders and descenders sit differently, and a line height tuned for Latin text will crowd them.
Choose the Arabic face deliberately rather than accepting whatever the browser falls back to. A default fallback is how a carefully designed English site ends up with an Arabic version that looks like a word processor document.
04Numbers, dates and forms
Numbers run left to right even inside right to left text, which browsers handle correctly on their own until someone forces the direction manually and breaks it.
Bahrain generally uses Western digits rather than Arabic-Indic ones, so switching digit styles for the Arabic version is usually the wrong instinct. Ask before assuming either way, because it varies by audience and by industry.
Forms need real attention. Labels and help text align right, while a phone number field, an email field and a password field all keep left to right input. A form that forces every field to right to left makes entering a phone number genuinely confusing, and confused users abandon forms.
05Two languages, one site, and how the switch should work
Give each language its own URL. Something like /ar/ alongside the English path, with hreflang tags telling Google that the two are versions of one another. A language toggle that swaps text with JavaScript at the same address gives Google one page where there should be two, and the Arabic version never ranks for anything.
The switch itself should land the user on the same page in the other language rather than dumping them back at the homepage. Sending someone from an Arabic product page to the English homepage is a small thing that loses sales.
Avoid choosing the language for people based on where their connection appears to be. Plenty of Arabic speakers browse in English by preference, and plenty of English speakers in Bahrain are not on a Bahraini connection. Offer the choice, remember it, and let the visitor decide.
06What to ask before you commit
Ask to see a live Arabic site the developer has built, open on a phone. Look at whether the logo stayed put, whether the navigation opens from the correct side, whether the Arabic type has room to breathe, and whether a phone number field still accepts a number comfortably.
Ask whether Arabic is inside the quote or billed afterwards. Ask who writes the Arabic, because translated marketing copy usually reads as translated, and customers notice. Ask what happens when you add a page later and need it in both languages.
The answers tell you quickly whether you are talking to someone who has shipped a bilingual site before, or someone who is about to learn on your budget.
Arabic that was designed, rather than translated at the end.
At Whale Digital Marketing we build fully bilingual Arabic and English sites with proper right to left layouts, so the Arabic version is designed with the same care as the English one. If you are weighing up a build, our guide to choosing a website development company in Bahrain covers what else to look for.
Explore website development in Bahrain →