Arabic and English RTL corporate website for an industrial group in Dubai (2026)

The verdict in three sentences

A Dubai industrial group with 5 subsidiaries that wants one site in Arabic and English must design RTL from the first wireframe, not bolt it onto a left-to-right theme. In the UAE market such a project runs 45,000 to 80,000 USD, plus professional translation of around 50 pages, 2026 order of magnitude. A realistic timeline is 12 weeks, with per-language content in the CMS and an approval workflow so each subsidiary publishes without blocking the others.

Why RTL is an architecture job

Arabic reads right to left, which flips the whole layout: menus, breadcrumbs, directional icons, carousels, data tables and forms. A site that just adds dir=rtl to the html tag ends up with reversed arrows, misaligned margins and unreadable tables. The right approach uses mirror templates built with CSS logical properties (margin-inline-start rather than margin-left), so a single codebase serves both directions.

Items to handle explicitly for a group active in cables, packaging and food processing:

• optimised Arabic typography: a font such as Noto Kufi Arabic, IBM Plex Sans Arabic or Tajawal, subset so you do not ship 400 KB of glyphs;
• numerals: a deliberate choice between Western digits and Arabic-Indic digits, applied consistently in data sheets and the annual report;
• mixed content: product codes, standards (IEC, ISO 22000) and brand names in Latin script inside Arabic text, which require bidirectional text control;
• downloadable PDFs: data sheets and reports must exist in both languages, not just the web pages.

Architecture, CMS and overall cost in Dubai

For a 5-subsidiary group, the soundest set-up is one site with a section per subsidiary, language versions in subfolders (/ar/, /en/) and reciprocal hreflang tags. Subdomains per subsidiary split SEO authority and multiply maintenance.

The CMS must treat languages as linked documents, not copies: a news item published in English stays flagged 'to translate' in Arabic. The usual workflow has three roles: subsidiary editor, language reviewer, group communications approver. Sanity, Strapi or a well-configured multilingual WordPress can do the job.

The site total sits between 45,000 and 80,000 USD depending on templates and integrations. For groups that hand the project to Kolonell, institutional sites are priced on quote after the scoping workshop, and languages are set in the quote.

On performance, a badly loaded Arabic font is enough to blow up LCP: we cover the thresholds in our article on Core Web Vitals for an estate agency network.

Mini case study

Rania, head of corporate communications at an industrial group in Dubai (head office in Business Bay, plants in Jebel Ali and KEZAD Abu Dhabi), currently runs 3 separate subsidiary sites and pays 9,000 USD a year in scattered hosting and maintenance. Her team spends about 20 hours a month republishing the same press releases on each site.

Unified project: 64,000 USD for the site plus 7,000 USD of translation, total 71,000 USD, then consolidated maintenance estimated at 5,000 USD a year.

Direct saving: 4,000 USD a year on maintenance, plus 14 hours a month saved by the single workflow (20 hours down to 6). At a loaded cost of 55 USD an hour, those 168 hours a year are worth 9,240 USD. The total saving reaches about 13,240 USD a year, before counting the commercial value of a credible Arabic site for tenders in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.

FAQ

Machine translation with review, or human translation?

For a corporate site, professional translation remains the norm, typically 100 to 180 USD per page depending on technicality. Reviewed machine translation can serve routine news, never corporate pages or data sheets.

One domain or one domain per language?

One domain with language subfolders is preferable in 90% of cases. It concentrates SEO authority and simplifies certificates and redirects.

Should the site use Gulf dialect anywhere?

Not on corporate pages, which use Modern Standard Arabic. Dialect can appear occasionally on social media or a local recruitment campaign.

How long to add a new subsidiary later?

With mirror templates and a well-structured CMS, an 8 to 10-page subsidiary section goes live in 2 to 3 weeks, translation included.

Which data protection rules apply in the UAE?

The federal PDPL (Decree-Law 45 of 2021) applies to contact and job application forms, and free zones such as DIFC have their own rules. A bilingual consent banner and a privacy policy in each language are required.

Let's scope your project. We map your subsidiaries, RTL templates and editorial workflow, then set a 12-week plan. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.