Arabic on the web, done properly
Why most bilingual sites feel half-built — and what "native RTL" actually means.
Most bilingual websites are not bilingual. They are an English website with the second-language copy poured in.
You can tell instantly. The Arabic sits in the wrong direction. The line breaks fall in the middle of words. The font is whatever the theme defaulted to — usually a Latin font pretending to read Arabic, all the wrong weights, none of the proper ligatures. The phone numbers are stranded LTR inside an RTL paragraph. The buttons read right-to-left but the arrows still point right.
Native RTL means rebuilding the page in mirror image — not flipping it with a CSS switch. The navigation flows right to left. The icons flip. The form labels sit on the correct side of the input. The Arabic uses a proper Arabic display face — Tajawal, IBM Plex Sans Arabic, Cairo, Noto — paired thoughtfully with the Latin face.
It is more work. It is also, in any bilingual market, the difference between a site that feels foreign and one that feels like home. Half your clients read in another script. Build for them properly, or accept that you are only half-open.