An Arabic help page can be correctly translated and still show a file path that is hard to read. An Arabic sentence, Latin letters, digits and punctuation meet on a single line. The solution is not to reverse the path in the data source. Its character sequence has to remain correct when it is copied.
The W3C guidance on bidirectional inline text describes suitable direction markup and isolation. It is a technical foundation, not new product news. For this article, we look at a small help card of our own: a short Arabic note and the unchanged example path /docs/v2?a=1.
Language and writing direction have different jobs
Among other things, a language tag tells assistive technology which language a piece of content belongs to. Direction markup describes how text should be laid out. An Arabic sentence needs both to be set appropriately; a technical expression within it does not therefore suddenly have to become Arabic.
Our example deliberately keeps these details separate. The outer card is Arabic and laid out from right to left. The known ASCII path is read from left to right. Its letters, slashes and question mark stay in the same logical order. The expression does not refer to any existing customer account or to any real service access.
<p lang="ar" dir="rtl">
المسار:
<bdi dir="ltr">/docs/v2?a=1</bdi>
</p>The short Arabic expression here means “the path”. The fragment is teaching material and not complete proof of a linguistically reviewed interface. A real check by someone who reads Arabic remains necessary, especially once explanatory sentences and further technical content are added.
The boundary of the expression is part of its meaning
Mark up only the technical expression that belongs together. A bracket that follows directly could belong to the Arabic sentence or be part of the technical string. This question cannot be answered across the board by mirroring the whole line.
The W3C distinguishes between inserted text whose direction is known and text whose direction is unknown. For a known path, the direction is explicit. For text inserted at runtime, automatic direction detection or a suitable isolating element can make sense. Choose the markup according to content and structure, not merely because the page is Arabic.
A link with an Arabic label is also something different from an ASCII address that is written out visibly. The link can lead to the same destination while its visible text follows a different direction. The target address and the label should therefore be considered separately.
A check of your own needs more than a screenshot
Next to the short fragment, create a second card with an adjacent bracket and a neutral version number. Look at the whole sentence, not just the path. Where does the technical detail begin? Which punctuation mark belongs to the explanation? Can a person who reads Arabic follow the context without having to puzzle over it?
Then copy only the path into a neutral text field and compare it character by character with the source. An address that looks pleasing but is reversed in the data would fail at this step. Display and copied result therefore answer two different quality questions.
These steps are a template for your own investigation. They were not carried out here as a browser or language test. A later report on results would have to name the environment used and the actual observations.
Keep an unchanged text source for the comparison. If you check the copy after a change to the display, you will then know whether only the markup was really adjusted or whether the data was accidentally changed. A screenshot alone could not tell these two causes apart.
A page’s base direction does not settle every detail
In KENJTEC WebSiteBuilder ai, a website described in Arabic is created with an Arabic language tag and a right-to-left base direction. Every Builder website has exactly one language. Custom HTML additions can be prepared manually in developer mode; a further language version is a separate website.
With additions of this kind in particular, mixed content remains your specific design task. A suitable base direction is no proof that every path, name and number has been embedded correctly. Preserve the logical character sequence, mark up its display appropriately and look at it within a sentence that is fully understandable. That way, translation and technical usability become two tasks that work together.
Sources and status
Research and documentation as of 25 October 2026. Inline markup and bidirectional text in HTML.
