Modern Standard Arabic or a regional dialect?
Arabic has one shared written standard and many spoken dialects. The right choice depends on who will read or hear your content, and where. This page explains the difference and how we help you decide.
Two kinds of Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic
The shared written form of Arabic, used for news, education, books, official documents and most formal writing. Readers in every Arab country understand it.
Best for
Websites, apps and software, help centres and documentation, courses for several markets, reports, packaging and print.
Regional dialects
The Arabic people speak every day. Dialects differ from country to country in vocabulary, pronunciation and expressions, and you hear them in conversation, on television, in advertising and on social media.
Best for
Campaigns, ads and social posts for one market, voiceover and dubbing for a local audience, and character voices in games.
Modern Standard Arabic is our default, because every Arab market reads it. When a project needs to sound local, we write it in the dialect of the market you are addressing, and we tell you plainly when that is worth doing.
The varieties we write
We write Modern Standard Arabic and the main regional voices, and choose the one that suits your market.
The same question in three Arabic voices. Choosing the right one for your market is part of our job.
The main regional dialects
Each of these is a family of local varieties. We write in the one your audience speaks.
- Gulf and Saudi
- Spoken in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, with clear differences between countries. We can write for the Gulf as a whole or for Saudi Arabia alone.
- Egyptian
- Spoken in Egypt, and widely understood across the Arab world through Egyptian film, television and music.
- Levantine
- Spoken in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine.
- Iraqi
- Spoken in Iraq.
- Maghrebi
- Spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. It differs most from the dialects of the east, and borrows many words from French and Amazigh.
- Sudanese
- Spoken in Sudan.
What changes by market, even in Modern Standard Arabic
Choosing Modern Standard Arabic does not make every market the same. These details still follow the country you sell to.
- Numerals
- Eastern Arabic digits (١٢٣) or Western digits (123), depending on the market.
- Dates and currencies
- Date order and where the currency sign sits follow local practice.
- Vocabulary
- Some everyday terms differ from country to country, even in formal writing, so we use the words your market uses.
How we advise you
Tell us who the audience is and where the work will appear. We recommend Modern Standard Arabic unless a local voice will clearly work better, and we point out where a version for one market is worth it.
The questions we ask
- Is the work for one market or for several?
- Will people read it, or hear it?
- Is it formal, such as a manual, a report or a course, or conversational, such as an ad or a social post?
- Does your brand already have an Arabic voice we should keep?
For voiceover and dubbing, you hear samples and choose the voice before we record. When you order through the instant quote, name the market and the variety in the notes for the team.
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