Why Arab teachers deserve tools that start in Arabic
A tool written in English and then translated leaves the Arab teacher the last step: fixing the language, the terms and the direction. A tool that starts in Arabic gives them sound formal Arabic, their curriculum's terms and a page that reads from the right, so the teacher reviews instead of repairing.
The argument in one sentence
This is an opinion piece, and its argument is this: tools and advice made for Arab teachers should start in Arabic, not be written in another language and translated for them as a last step. Starting in Arabic means three things at once: formal Arabic written as Arabic rather than carried into it, the terms of the curriculum the teacher actually teaches, and a page built right to left from the start.
Where this view comes from
On the About page, String's founder writes who the company is building for, under the heading “Learning, as accessible as possible, to everyone, everywhere.” Among the things he rules out:
Not the schools that can afford it. Not the languages that are profitable to support.
And on the same page:
We built this in Amman, in Arabic, for schools with no budget for a second attempt. That was deliberate. A product that works there works anywhere, and a product built for the easy market never travels the other way.
What we found on some pages written for Arab teachers
Arabic is not a small language waiting its turn for translation. UNESCO calls it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, used daily by more than 400 million people. World Arabic Language Day, celebrated every year on 18 December since 2012, marks the day in 1973 when the UN General Assembly adopted Arabic as the sixth official language of the Organization.
A UNESCO article of 19 February 2016 reports that 40% of the global population does not access education in a language they understand, and that being taught in a language other than their own can negatively impact children's learning. A teacher who teaches in Arabic needs the sheet to reach students in Arabic; if the teacher's tools think in another language, the teacher becomes the translator between them and the class.
In October 2026 we read three Arabic pages that our search for teacher materials and advice had turned up, and found one pattern in each. We do not name the pages; the point is the pattern, not who published it, and three pages are not enough to judge all Arabic content:
- Arabic templates with English labels. A page offering lesson-plan templates under Arabic headings, while the images showing those same templates carry English captions.
- Advice that keeps the marks of translation. An Arabic article on active learning whose sign-up form messages are literal or garbled renderings of English interface text, and whose text mixes two numeral systems.
- An AI guide written for a different teacher. An Arabic article on AI prompts for teachers that points them, on protecting student data, to U.S. privacy laws (FERPA, COPPA and CCPA), cites a Harvard report, and mentions no Arab curriculum and no Arab education ministry.
We do not read these patterns as one writer's mistakes. We see them as what tends to happen when material is written for one reader and moved to another at the last step: the words arrive, but the curriculum, the direction and the context do not.
What it means for a tool to start in Arabic
- Formal Arabic written as Arabic, not carried into it. Arabic word order, correct hamza, no translated constructions, no dialect.
- The teacher's own curriculum terms. Learning outcomes are «نتاجات» in one country and «نواتج» in another, and the semester and the grade are named the way the ministry names them. A tool that does not know the curriculum hands the teacher a generic sheet to rewrite.
- A page built from the right. A table that reads from the right, an Arabic line in which a formula or an English word stays where it belongs, one numeral system throughout. None of this can be added after translation; it is built in from the start.
This is clearest with AI tools: a request the teacher writes in Arabic should be understood in Arabic and come back as an Arabic sheet. Twenty Arabic prompts for lesson preparation shows requests written this way.
The strongest case against this view
The strongest objection is that most education research and the widest range of resources are in English, that Arab students need English for their studies and their work, and that English teachers, and anyone teaching their subject in English, need tools in English. Add to that the fact that a large translated tool may have more features than a young Arabic one. Why should a teacher go without it?
Our answer is that “starts in Arabic” does not mean “knows only Arabic”. It means the tool starts in the language of the class in front of the teacher: if the lesson is in Arabic, the sheet is written in Arabic from the first line; if it is in English, in English from the first line. The problem is not English. It is the translation layer, which the teacher pays for in time while fixing what it broke. Research written in English belongs in the Arab classroom too, read and then written again for that classroom; this blog cites English sources in many of its posts, but writes its Arabic as Arabic.
What would change this view? Teachers trying translated tools on their own lessons and finding that the output needs no fixing in language, terms or direction. Then the gap between “starts in Arabic” and “translated into it” is smaller than we claim. The test below answers that in a few minutes.
A five-minute test for any tool, this week
Take a lesson from your own textbook, not a general topic, and ask the tool for a worksheet on it in Arabic. Then check the sheet against these points:
- Read the first paragraph aloud: is it sound formal Arabic, with correct hamza, no dialect and no translated constructions?
- Does it use your curriculum's terms: «نتاجات» or «نواتج», and the semester and grade as your ministry names them?
- Does the table read from the right, and does a formula or English word stay in place inside the Arabic line?
- Is there one numeral system across the whole sheet?
- Are the examples from your students' world: their names, their currency, their cities?
- Could you print it as it is, or would you rewrite half of it?
If the tool fails two of these, the time you will spend fixing it is its real price, as we argue in A teacher's time is not free. String Studio is one of the tools you can run this test on: you write your request in Arabic and get a draft worksheet or test in Arabic, which you review before printing.
Frequently asked questions
- Why isn't translating a tool into Arabic enough?
- Translation moves the words, but not the curriculum, the direction of the page or the student's world, so the teacher still has to fix those before printing.
- How do I choose among Arabic edtech platforms?
- Do not ask whether a tool is in Arabic; ask whether it starts in Arabic. Try it on a lesson from your own textbook and check what it makes against the six points in this post.
- How many people speak Arabic?
- UNESCO says Arabic is used daily by more than 400 million people and is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
- Should I write my AI prompt in Arabic or English?
- Write it in the language the sheet will reach your students in, then check the result against the same points. If the tool cannot understand your request in Arabic, that is an answer in itself. You can try it in String.
Sources
Every fact in this post that we did not produce ourselves comes from one of these sources.
- World Arabic Language Day — UNESCO, undated page, read 2026-10-22
- 40% don't access education in a language they understand — UNESCO, 2016-02-19 (updated 2023-04-20)
Written with String's editorial team: we use AI for research and first drafts, and a person checks every fact and every source before anything is published. How we write
Founder and CEO, String
“I grew up in a house of teachers.” I spent a year designing the STEM program for one of the largest school groups in Saudi Arabia, have written curriculum by hand, trained robotics coaches and sold software into schools, then left that job to build String in Amman.
