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Also add "use the correct Arabic for your target audience". "Arabic" is not monolithic and using the wrong dialect can go over as well as using Scots on a web page intended for Jamaicans.


As an Arabic speaker, baby steps!

For spoken Arabic, a decent placeholder is either MSA (standard Arabic) or a generally understood dialect (Egyptian or Levantine).

The latter is what a lot of the recent Arabic game dubs have been doing (e.g., Ubisoft). Another example: Pixar and Disney use Egyptian Arabic for their dubs.

Edit: Oh, and for written Arabic, you should almost always be using MSA. That is, you shouldn’t worry about the dialect of your target audience.


I pity the poor dev who has a Moroccan co-worker that helpfully offers to translate their application into darija thinking it’s Arabic


Tangent: I hate how Moroccans monopolized the word darija to mean "Moroccan Arabic". Every country in North Africa calls their own language darija!


Do you know why levantine arabic is more used for dubbing ?


My understanding is that it’s simply because they were among the first to setup dedicated dubbing studios.




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