- ISO 639
ar- Its own name
- العربية
- Script
- Arabic
- Direction
- Right to left
Arabic
Arabic (العربية) is spoken by 378.6M people across 34 territories in CLDR, and is official nationally in 26 of them. Egypt holds 28% of its speakers. One translation covers all of it, which is why localization is planned by language and launched by market.
At a glance
What one translation into Arabic buys, before anyone argues about which market to enter first.
Speakers
378.6M
Egypt 28% · Saudi Arabia 10% · Algeria 9%
First and second language speakers, summed across the 34 territories CLDR records. The bar splits them by territory, largest first.
Online speakers
260.3M
0%100%
69% of speakers, once each territory's speaker count is scaled by its World Bank internet rate. Territories with no internet figure contribute nothing, so this is a floor.
Concentration
28%
0%100%
The largest single territory, Egypt, holds 28% of speakers. Spread out enough that regional wording and currency will come up.
Territories
34
26 where it is official nationally, 24 where at least one person in five speaks it. The rest are diaspora and minority populations, which CLDR does record.
Reachable GDP
$18.8T
Combined GDP of every territory where the language appears at all. An upper bound on the market, not a revenue forecast: it counts the whole economy, not the speakers' share of it.
Translation rate
1.25×
1.0×1.6×+
About 25% above a mainstream pair, reflecting how many vendors work in it. Feeds the budget estimator directly.
Where Arabic is spoken
Every territory CLDR records, largest speaker count first. Share is of that territory's own population, so the column does not add up to anything.
| Territory | Share of that market | Speakers | Online | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EgyptEG | 94% | 104.6M | 78.1M | official |
| Saudi ArabiaSA | 100% | 36.5M | 36.5M | official |
| AlgeriaDZ | 74% | 34.8M | 26.9M | official |
| SudanSD | 61% | 30.8M | 5.7M | official |
| IraqIQ | 68% | 28.6M | 23.3M | official |
| YemenYE | 74% | 23.8M | 4.2M | official |
| MoroccoMA | 62% | 23.2M | 21.1M | official |
| SyriaSY | 80% | 19.1M | 6.4M | official |
| JordanJO | 100% | 11.2M | 10.7M | official |
| TunisiaTN | 90% | 10.8M | 8.3M | official |
| United Arab EmiratesAE | 78% | 7.8M | 7.8M | official |
| LibyaLY | 74% | 5.4M | 4.5M | official |
| Palestinian TerritoriesPS | 100% | 5.4M | 4.7M | official |
| LebanonLB | 86% | 4.6M | 3.7M | official |
| SomaliaSO | 34% | 4.4M | 1.2M | official |
| MauritaniaMR | 85% | 3.7M | 1.7M | official |
| South SudanSS | 27% | 3.4M | 228.8K | major |
| ChadTD | 17% | 3.2M | 409.9K | official |
| OmanOM | 81% | 3.2M | 3M | official |
| KuwaitKW | 100% | 3.1M | 3.1M | official |
| QatarQA | 89% | 2.3M | 2.2M | official |
| IsraelIL | 20% | 1.9M | 1.7M | official |
| IranIR | 2% | 1.8M | 1.5M | minority or diaspora |
| BahrainBH | 87% | 1.4M | 1.4M | official |
| CanadaCA | 2% | 892.3K | 841.9K | minority or diaspora |
| Western SaharaEH | 100% | 652.3K | — | official |
| ComorosKM | 66% | 594.1K | 193.2K | official |
| TürkiyeTR | 0.56% | 471.1K | 422.9K | minority or diaspora |
| EritreaER | 5% | 310.9K | 44.6K | official |
| United KingdomGB | 0.30% | 205.4K | 196.1K | minority or diaspora |
| MaliML | 0.90% | 197.9K | 72.8K | minority or diaspora |
| CameroonCM | 0.39% | 120.8K | 55.9K | minority or diaspora |
| DjiboutiDJ | 7% | 72.6K | 47.4K | official |
| NigerNE | 0.21% | 55.3K | 8.6K | minority or diaspora |
The long tail matters. CLDR does record diaspora populations, so a language usually appears in more territories than its home markets, at small shares. Those rows rarely justify a launch on their own. They are why a language's total reach is larger than any one country page shows. A dash in the online column means the territory has no World Bank internet figure, and it does not mean zero.
What it takes to ship
The work that is not translation: the writing system, the grammar your message format has to survive, and what the words cost.
Writing system
Arabic
Lays out right to left, so the interface mirrors as well as translates. Bundle a webfont: platform defaults do not reliably cover this script.
Plural categories
6
Every counted message needs up to 6 arms, and the translator has to be given all of them.
Rate index
1.25×
Prices about 25% above a mainstream pair.
Engineering note. 6 plural categories. Bidi work required.