Arabic App Development and Right-to-Left Support
Every product we have shipped runs in English, French and Arabic, with full right-to-left layout. Not translated afterwards — designed for it from the first screen, because that is the only way it comes out right.
RTL is not translation
Teams routinely budget for Arabic as a translation task, then discover the real work only once the strings are in. Right-to-left means the interface itself mirrors: navigation flips, back arrows point the other way, progress bars fill from the right, drawers open from the opposite edge, and anything positioned with a hard-coded left or right value ends up in the wrong place.
Then there is bidirectional text. An Arabic sentence containing a Latin brand name, a phone number or a URL runs in both directions at once, and the rules for where the punctuation lands are genuinely subtle. Numerals may be Arabic-Indic or Western depending on locale. Dates, currency positions and pluralisation rules all differ.
None of that is hard when it is designed in. All of it is expensive when it is retrofitted, because the fix is not a translation file — it is every layout in the application.
What we handle
- Mirrored layouts driven by I18nManager rather than per-screen overrides
- Logical start/end properties instead of hard-coded left and right
- Bidirectional text where Latin names appear inside Arabic sentences
- Arabic-Indic and Western numeral handling per locale
- Locale-aware dates, currency placement and pluralisation
- Typography and line-height tuned for Arabic script, which sits differently
- Language switching without forcing an app restart
Proven across four products
This is not a capability statement. Alina, VoyJoy, Forsa and Kolloh all ship in English, French and Arabic with RTL throughout — a marketplace, a travel app, a booking platform and a multi-country commerce platform.
Building it four times is how you learn the parts that are not in the documentation: which component libraries quietly break under mirroring, where iOS and Android diverge on language switching, and how to keep a design system coherent when half your users read in the opposite direction.
Working with the Gulf and North Africa
We work with clients across Europe, the Gulf and North Africa. Nova AI CLOUD is a UK-registered company, which many regional clients prefer for contracting, and delivery is remote — the norm for software work in the region rather than an exception.
Products built for these markets usually need more than language support: per-country payment providers, local delivery integrations, and currency and tax rules that differ by market. We build that configuration in from the start, so entering the next country is a settings change rather than a project.
Common questions
Can you build an app in Arabic?
Yes. Every product we ship supports English, French and Arabic with full right-to-left layout — mirrored interfaces, bidirectional text, and locale-aware numerals, dates and currency. We have done it on four products.
How much does adding RTL cost?
Very little if it is designed in from the start — largely a matter of using logical layout properties and testing in both directions. Retrofitting it into an app not built for it is a different matter, because the work is in every layout rather than in a translation file. We will give you an honest estimate after reading the codebase.
Do you work with clients in Saudi Arabia and the UAE?
Yes. We are a UK-registered company working remotely with clients across Europe, the Gulf and North Africa, which is standard practice for software delivery in the region.
Can you add Arabic to an app we already have?
Usually. We start by reading the codebase and telling you honestly how much of the layout assumes left-to-right. That assessment is part of the discovery sprint, and it determines whether this is a contained piece of work or a broader refactor.
Tell us what you are building
Most projects start with a one-week discovery sprint. You get a scope, a technical plan and a costed roadmap — yours to keep, whoever builds it.