Pasting Arabic into an Arabic font

[Bill Amatneek]

InDesign CS4/Win XP Pro:

I am attempting to translate an English sentence into Arabic, and set the
translation in an Arabic font in ID. (Arabic is read right to left.)

I use translate.google.com to translate the sentence from English to Arabic. The
Arabic translation displays right to left, with the period on the far left.

I have downloaded a couple of Arabic fonts, Diwani Letter and Kacst Book. I
create a blank line in ID with the Type Tool, and set the font to one of these
two, and then copy/paste the Arabic translation from translate.google into the line.

But, as far as I can tell, the words are being displayed left to right, with the
period being displayed on the far right of the sentence, just as it is in
English, which is incorrect.

Each word seems to be correct, but displayed in LIFO (last in, first out) order.
If I Flip Horizontal the text frame, the letters appear backwards.

I have tried remaking the sentence, putting the last Arabic word first, the
second-to-last second, etc. But that does not appear to be similar to the
original translation either.

All this is made difficult by the unusual appearance to these Western eyes of
the Arabic letters and words: I can't say for certain I'm "seeing" this all
correctly.

Has anyone dealt with this issue in ID?

Best regards to all,
Bill Amatneek
VineyardsPress.com

[Dick Margulis]

On 2/13/2013 2:40 PM, Bill Amatneek wrote:
>
> I have downloaded a couple of Arabic fonts, Diwani Letter and Kacst
> Book. I create a blank line in ID with the Type Tool, and set the font
> to one of these two, and then copy/paste the Arabic translation from
> translate.google into the line.
>
> But, as far as I can tell, the words are being displayed left to right,
> with the period being displayed on the far right of the sentence, just
> as it is in English, which is incorrect.
>

You've selected an Arabic font, but have you set the language to Arabic
in the Language dropdown (or in the paragraph style)?