Adobe Indesign Arabic Script Alphabet

Alphabet

Opus is working with the Office of Economic Empowerment a department within the State Treasury. The Office runs programs on financial literacy which are available to families throughout Massachusetts. Their collateral needs to be translated into 7 languages. Most are pretty straightforward, we copy and past the translations from MSWord into Indesign and rework the text and layout to fit. Then there’s Arabic. When you paste Arabic text in Indesign, something weird happens.

Script

It flows in reverse. Instead of “1234,” you see “4321.”

Adobe Indesign Arabic Script Alphabet Font

And for those of us who do not read or speak Arabic, you wouldn’t even notice. Arabic is read from right to left, so can you just right align the text? Not even close.

Adobe indesign arabic script alphabet free

Arabic is one of the world’s great languages. The Arabic language has a long cultural history, with Classical Arabic stretching back to least the 4th Century. Arabic typesetting and calligraphy also has a long history, as described in this excellent ilovetypography article, “Arabic calligraphy as a typographic exercise”. It is quite evident that the Arabic is one of the most widely spoken and written languages throughout the world. Therefore, people from are very keen in learning the language. The various types of Arabic alphabet or letter templates are proving quite useful as the learning process has been simplified to a great extent. Watermelon Russian Script Font (TTF, OTF, WOFF) Here's the perfect Russian script font for invitations, slogans, product packaging, and more. This stylish hand-lettered typeface gives you that calligraphic, ink-brush look. Maloishe Brush Cyrillic Cursive Font (TTF, OTF, WOFF) Maloishe is a handmade brush script font that's full of character.

Alphabet

So I started to look online for solutions: Indesign Secrets, Adobe Forums, Lynda, a World Tool that cost $99 and a free plug-in that didn’t work. I installed Indesign ME or the Middle East version of Indesign…that was a disaster. In all the search and skimming through forums and blogs, I’m afraid I can’t remember where exactly I found the solution. But I’m so thankful it worked and it’s here now so I’ll never forget.

How to Paste Arabic in your indesign file.

Adobe Indesign Arabic Script Alphabet Letters

  1. Create a text box
  2. Select and Fill with Placeholder text while holding down COMMAND.
  3. A popup allows you to pick a language. select Arabic
  4. The box will fill with Arabic lorem ipsum.
Arabic

Use this box to copy and paste your text from MSword. It’s a little weird selecting text, but you can style as usual.

Adobe Indesign Arabic Script Alphabet Free

What’s nice about this is that you can run text in both directions using this method. So if you have English and Arabic in the same document, it’s perfect.