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RTL/LTR Language and regional settings

Timothy Gregory

I work from Arabic into English. I recently created a new project where I expect to add files later from different parts of the Arab world, so I selected Arabic (World) as my source language. 

When I opened the editor to begin translating, the source text was displayed Left-to-Right (LTR) instead of Right-to-Left (RTL).

When created a different project and chose Arabic (Egypt), Arabic (Lebanon), or Arabic (Saudi Arabia), the source side displayed RTL as it should when using exactly the same source file.

Two questions, then:

1) Is there someplace I can change the Editor settings for Arabic (World) so it will display the source text as RTL?

2) Is this a bug in SDL Trados Studio 2017 that needs to be addressed?

Since I work from Arabic into English, my TMs would be more flexible if I were able to select the more generic Arabic for my source language.

Thanks,

 

--Tim
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    Hello Timothy Gregory (TimothyGregory),

     

    I have taken a look at this and concur with your findings

    ar-EG_en-UK

    However when choosing ar- World)_en_UK we get the following results

    suggesting a problem with indentation.

     

    I wanted then to test what happens then if the TARGET language was Arabic 

     

    After researching this a little more in depth, it appears the choice of Windows Operating System is also critical to the language support.

    The following table shows which languages/variants are supported and under which Operating System.

    https://sdl.ssl.cdn.sdlmedia.com/6845.pdf

    It therefore appears that the International variant should only be used as a last resort (in this case) as I believe there are differences in

    characters, indentation, formatting, spacing, keyboard, dates, times etc between the different language variants.

     

    Out of interest and whether this should be flagged to the developers-

    Is the LTR indentation when using (International Arabic) as opposed to RTL a personal preference,

    or would/could this be seen as project critical- especially as Arabic in the target displays correctly?

     

     

     

    Lydia Simplicio | RWS Group

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  • 0 in reply to Lydia Simplicio

    It's been a long time since you posted this, and I'm not sure it is still a problem - however:

    If Arabic (no matter the "variant") is displayed LTR and any actual LTR text (i.e. an English word) appears, it will break the reading and display order in the segment. For example - if all of the text below were Arabic except for the English word "GOTCHA," it would be like this:

    RTL (correct reading order for Arabic)

    This is a segment GOTCHA in SDL Trados.

    LTR (incorrect reading order)

    in SDL TradosGOTCHAThis is a segment

    (note the spacing disappears because the space characters precede "in" and follow "segment")

    So if the text is 100% Arabic with no LTR characters or words, it can be translated from an LTR direction. The inclusion of any LTR characters or words, however, will pose a real challenge to the translator.
  • 0 in reply to Lydia Simplicio

    Hi Steven,

    I confirm that this is still a problem even with the 2019 version. Whenever I have AR World as my TARGET language, the alignment is LTR instead of RTL. This is a real linguistic problem that needs to be addressed. 

    Best,

    Noura