Multilingual websites in Arabic, French and English

Why is a multilingual Arabic and French website more than a translation?

Many bilingual websites give themselves away within seconds. The language switcher sends you back to the home page, the Arabic version still carries blocks of French, the arrows point the wrong way and the contact form replies in English. Visitors do not draw a technical conclusion from this. They conclude that the company is not really talking to them.

A serious multilingual Arabic and French website treats each language as a complete version, with its own URLs, headings, image captions and contact journeys. That is the difference between a translated website and one that sells in several languages.

Which languages should you publish, and for which markets?

Start from your markets, not from a dictionary. In Tunisia, business buyers often search in French, while Arabic reaches the wider public and local searches more readily; the audit checks that split against your own queries. In Europe, buyers expect French or English. In the Middle East, a credible brand presents itself in Arabic, usually alongside an English version for international decision-makers.

Our rule: two complete languages beat three half-finished ones, because a version nobody keeps up to date does more harm than good. We set the languages according to your real capacity to write and approve content, and we plan for adding one later without rebuilding the site.

What does a genuine Arabic RTL website involve?

Moving a website into Arabic is not a matter of flipping it like a mirror. The script runs from right to left, but phone numbers, email addresses and product references still run from left to right, sometimes mid-sentence.

Here is what we check on every Arabic version:

• the direction declared in the page code, for browsers, screen readers and search engines;
• margins, alignment and menus built on 'start' and 'end' rather than 'left' and 'right', so they reverse cleanly;
• directional icons (arrows, back buttons, carousels) reversed, but never logos or photos;
• an Arabic typeface that reads well on screen, more generous line height and no letter spacing, which would break the joins between letters;
• Western digits, the norm in Tunisia, or Eastern Arabic numerals, still widespread in the Gulf: one choice, applied everywhere;
• forms that behave: cursor alignment, phone fields that accept +216, +33 or +971, and error messages written in Arabic;
• mixed text, where a Latin brand name or a number sits inside an Arabic sentence without scrambling it.

An Arabic reader spots a broken join or reversed punctuation instantly, just as an English reader notices a spelling mistake. So we test components with real copy in all three languages, never placeholder text: a button that fits in English can overflow in French.

How does each language get found on Google and by AI engines?

Each language gets its own URLs, for example /fr/, /en/ and /ar/, with reciprocal hreflang tags that tell search engines which page matches which language. Titles, descriptions, image text and structured data are written in the language of the page, and the sitemap declares every version. If your site already exists and its language versions are poorly indexed, our technical SEO work starts with that diagnosis.

To settle before launch: whether the Arabic version's URLs use Latin or Arabic characters. Both get indexed; the former share more cleanly, the latter read better in search results. Changing them later means redirects.

We also avoid a common mistake: redirecting visitors automatically according to their country. A French expatriate in Dubai may prefer the French version, and a crawler that only ever sees one version cannot index the others. The website suggests a language; it does not impose it.

Then comes the choice of words. A prospect in Sousse and a buyer in Riyadh do not type the same query, even for the same need; our article on long-tail keywords in the Tunisian market shows how to spot those phrasings. AI answer engines, for their part, are more likely to cite a page that answers plainly in its own language, with no guarantee either way.

Who writes and approves the copy in each language?

We start from a reference language, usually French, and adapt rather than translate. English is rewritten for an international buyer, and Arabic in Modern Standard Arabic that reads well from Tunis to the Gulf.

Machine translation and AI tools speed up the first draft, but nothing goes live as it stands: every text is reviewed by a native speaker, from our team or yours, and a shared glossary fixes how your products, services and technical terms are written. Our Copywriting & editorial content service takes over when you lack the resources in-house.

One limit worth knowing: we adapt marketing copy, not legal documents. Your terms and conditions and privacy policy should be approved by a lawyer in each language, with the GDPR in Europe, Tunisia's Organic Law No. 2004-63 or Saudi Arabia's PDPL in mind. We cite these frameworks without promising legal compliance.

How does the website stay manageable in three languages?

In the admin area we deliver, every piece of content is entered in French, English and Arabic, and a missing translation is flagged. You decide whether a page waits until all its versions are ready or goes live in one language first; either way, the language switcher never leads to an empty page.

The details that wear teams down are built in from the start: alt text for every image in each language, confirmation emails sent automatically in the visitor's language, and contact requests stored with their original language. Your sales team knows which language to reply in before even opening the message.

Do you need a new website to add Arabic?

Not always. A recent WordPress site, with a theme that genuinely supports RTL and a well-maintained multilingual plugin, can host a decent Arabic version. The equation changes when the theme was never designed for Arabic, when plugins keep piling up or when the site is already slow; our comparison, Next.js or WordPress, sets out these criteria.

When any of these signs appears, a redesign and migration to Next.js is often simpler than fixing the existing site page by page. The old translated URLs then need redirecting one by one, as explained in our guide to website migration with SEO continuity. For a first website, we start from a Next.js corporate website designed for several languages from the first mock-up.

Why work on this with AD AZUR DIGITAL?

Our team in Sfax works in French, English and Arabic every day. The website you are reading is published in all three languages, with an Arabic version designed in RTL: you can judge the result before you talk to us. Tunisia is on UTC+1 all year round: the same time as Paris in winter, one hour behind in summer, and three hours behind Dubai. Meetings fit within the working day of all three markets.

The technical foundation is the one used across our web development practice: Next.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL and hosting you can take over. You keep ownership of the code, the content and the accounts.

Note down your priority markets, the pages that bring in enquiries today and the person who will approve each language, then request a free audit: it will settle which languages to publish and in what order.