The verdict in three sentences
For a 900-employee construction group bidding on government projects and courting investors across the Gulf and francophone Africa, a trilingual Arabic, English and French website costs 65,000 to 118,000 AED excluding VAT for 35 pages, plus about 9,000 AED of professional translation. The project takes 12 to 16 weeks, two to three of which go into right-to-left layout and Arabic proofreading. A single headless CMS managing all three languages avoids running three separate sites and halves the cost of every update.
What a trilingual construction group website costs in 2026
A construction group's corporate site is not a simple brochure. It must show verifiable project references, certifications (ISO 9001, ISO 45001, contractor classification with Dubai Municipality), an ESG policy and careers pages that attract engineers and site managers. Every block exists in three languages, and Arabic needs its own templates.
| Cost line | 2026 range (AED excl. VAT) | What is included |
|---|---|---|
| Scoping, sitemap, workshops | 9,000-16,500 | communications, engineering, HR |
| Design and mock-ups AR, EN, FR | 11,000-20,000 | RTL variants of the 8 to 10 key templates |
| Front-end build and RTL integration | 22,000-40,500 | mirrored navigation, Arabic typography, forms |
| Headless CMS and approval workflow | 11,000-22,000 | writer, translator and approver roles |
| References and project map | 7,500-13,000 | filters by sector, emirate, client |
| QA, accessibility, performance | 3,500-5,500 | mobile, screen readers, Core Web Vitals |
| Professional translation AR and FR | 9,000 | about 21,000 words, construction glossary |
These are 2026 orders of magnitude for agencies delivering custom work, converted from the North African market where much of this production is done; Dubai-based studios often quote 30 to 60 % more. CDN hosting with backups then runs 550 to 1,500 AED a month depending on traffic and uptime requirements.
Arabic RTL is far more than translation
Moving a site to Arabic means flipping the entire visual logic: menu on the right, arrows and carousels reversed, tables read right to left, directional icons adapted. Arabic fonts (IBM Plex Sans Arabic, Noto Kufi Arabic) have different line heights, which breaks layouts tuned for Latin script. You also need to choose between Western and Eastern Arabic numerals, handle bilingual forms and produce brochure PDFs that read correctly in both directions.
The architecture choice weighs more on the budget than translation itself.
| Approach | Initial cost (AED excl. VAT) | Effort per update | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three separate sites, one per language | 96,000-155,000 | 3 entries and 3 integrations | content drifting out of sync |
| One site + machine translation | 33,000-55,000 | low | weak Arabic, damaged credibility |
| Single headless CMS, 3 linked languages | 65,000-118,000 | 1 entry, 2 linked translations | needs a clear editorial workflow |
| AR and EN first, French in phase 2 | 52,000-89,000 + 22,000 | medium | French launch delayed 2 to 3 months |
| Classic CMS with multilingual plugin | 44,000-74,000 | medium | fragile RTL, plugins to maintain |
With a headless setup, each news item, reference or job offer is entered once, then sent to the translator from the interface. The approver sees all three versions side by side before publishing, so no language version falls six months behind the others.
A realistic 12 to 16 week timeline
| Phase | Duration | Deliverable |
|---|---|---|
| Scoping and sitemap | 2 weeks | site plan, inventory of 35 pages |
| Mock-ups in Arabic, then English and French | 3 weeks | templates approved in both reading directions |
| Development and CMS | 4-6 weeks | staging site, roles configured |
| Translation in parallel | 3 weeks | texts proofread by an engineer |
| Reference integration | 2 weeks | 30 to 60 projects documented |
| RTL QA and go-live | 1-2 weeks | public site, redirects, analytics |
The bottleneck is almost always content collection: royalty-free site photos, figures signed off by finance, client names cleared for publication. Plan an internal owner available two half-days a week.
Need a professional website?
Kolonell builds websites that attract clients, optimized for the Sénégalese market. Free quote in 2 minutes.
Mini case study
Yasmine, head of communications at a hypothetical 900-employee construction group in Dubai, publishes about 40 items a year: completed projects, news, job offers. With three separate sites, every publication requires three integrations by the agency, roughly a 22,000 AED annual maintenance contract. With a headless CMS, her team publishes directly and the agency only handles new features: the contract drops to 11,000 AED a year. The extra upfront cost of headless over a classic CMS, about 22,000 AED, pays back in two years, and every language version stays in sync.
FAQ
Do we need to translate the whole site into every language?
Not necessarily. Many groups translate 20 to 25 strategic pages out of 35 (group, business lines, references, ESG, contact) into the secondary language and keep some news in the primary one. That cuts translation by about 30 %.
How much does professional Arabic and French translation cost?
As a 2026 order of magnitude, count 0.18 to 0.26 AED per word for proofread technical translation from North African providers. For 35 pages, about 21,000 words per target language overall, the budget is around 9,000 AED.
Does the site need to comply with UAE data protection law?
Yes, as soon as it collects job applications or contact requests, it processes personal data under Federal Decree-Law 45 of 2021. You need a privacy policy in three languages, a consent banner and a clear retention period, typically 24 months for applications.
Can we add a fourth language later?
With a headless CMS, adding Spanish or Portuguese is mostly a translation cost, around 3,500 to 5,500 AED, plus one to two weeks of QA. With three separate sites, you would have to build a fourth.
How long does an Arabic version alone take?
If the English site already sits on a clean architecture, the Arabic version takes 4 to 6 weeks and 18,000 to 30,000 AED, translation included.
Let's scope your project. Send your sitemap, priority languages and tender deadline: we will price the trilingual scope, the headless architecture and the timeline. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.
Mohamed Bah
Fondateur, Kolonell
Passionate about digital and entrepreneurship in Africa, Mohamed has been helping Sénégalese businesses with their digital transformation since 2020. Founder of Kolonell, he believes every SME deserves a professional and accessible online présence.
