Arabic text mixed up

• 

  cachgermany · Member · Oct 11, 2019 at 6:49 pm

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  Hi,

  I have a website with texts in 9 different languages and all translations have been meticulously done by native speakers. I now want to add Arabic and face the following problems:

  * the full stop at the end of the sentence keeps on getting placed at the right side of the line, not the left side which is the end of the Arabic text

  * when I copy a part of the text from an MS office file (mostly PPT) and paste it, it looks completely mixed up

  I have inserted a screenschot of the original text + the text I copied into the WP editor on this page:

  خلفية

  You will see in the third paragraph that e.g. the brackets around the word IUCN are all wrong and that the numbers 43 and 21 have skipped postions.

  Since I neither speak, understand or write Arabic, this is quite a nervewracking situation :-(

  Please help!

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

• 

  kokkieh · Staff · Oct 12, 2019 at 9:54 am

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  Hi there,

  Websites use HTML, while programs like Word and PowerPoint uses what’s called Rich Text Format, and the two don’t always play along well. So first thing we have to rule out is that this isn’t an issue with trying to paste rich text into an HTML editor.

  After copying the text from PowerPoint or Word, first paste it into Notepad on your computer. Then copy it again from there and paste into the WordPress.com editor. Does that make any difference?

  If not, can you please provide more detail on exactly what’s wrong? I don’t see any significant difference between the two versions you have on that page except for where line breaks are happening, but then I don’t speak Arabic either.

  Regarding the parentheses for the IUCN text, the issue there is most likely because you have left-to-right text inserted in the middle of a sentence writting in a right-to-left language, and the editor is assuming the parentheses form part of the Arabic sentence, rather than part of the abbreviation in Latin script.

  If the pasting process to strip out rich text code I explained above doesn’t help with this, you’ll likely need to manually edit the text, possibly in the HTML editor, after pasting it into WordPress.com.