Combining Left to Right and Right to Left Languages

Mar 20, 2017

Hello all,

I am currently working on converting a course to Arabic. I have no problems copying and pasting the Arabic alone. However, I have several lines of text that combine both Arabic and English (In this case the majority of the text is in Arabic but the Company names aren't translated). When I copy this text into Storyline it gets jumbled and will rearrange the Arabic.  Is there a way to avoid this?

I also am having issues with maintaining (or adding) the punctuation when pasting Arabic into a slide. The period at the end of the sentence almost always jumps to the beginning of the sentence. I don't think this happens mid-paragraph but it does occur consistently on the final line of a paragraph.

8 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Coniqua,

A really interesting step up you have! I don't think I've seen a lot of combinations of RTL and LTR text in the same course, let alone in the same text field. Could you look at using separate text boxes and adjusting those or even images? I'd love to have our team also take a look at some of the text in question and what you are seeing - can you share some examples by uploading them to our Support Engineers here? 

That way we can also take a look at the behavior with the period and punctuation jumping mid sentence or to the beginning. 

Justin Bowlin

We are experiencing the same issue above with Hebrew as was reported above. It's very common to include certain phrases or department names in English. We have used text boxes to mask some of these issues, but it does not worked in closed captioning or alt text and accessibility is compromised. An the punctuation challenges are so time consuming to fix. Is Articulate working on a fix for this?

Becca Levan

Thanks for reaching out, and welcome to the community!

We have an open issue similar to what you're experiencing: punctuation and letters will display incorrectly when combining English with Right to Left settings.

From here, I want our support engineers to take a closer look at your file to determine if you're experiencing a possible bug. I've opened a support case on your behalf, and we'll reach out via email soon!

Kim Leal

I just discovered this thread and am experiencing the same issue, but with Arabic. At first, I thought maybe the entire text portion was showing up left to right, but the text itself is correctly right to left. Only the period is is the wrong spot. A few weeks ago I had a temporary fix where I could use the Home button, then type a period and it would be placed correctly, but that no longer works. 
Is there a fix for this issue?

Steven Benassi

Hi Kim & Jurgen!

Thanks for reaching out and sharing the feedback!

After testing the behavior on my end, I can confirm you are being affected by a known bug our development team is actively tracking. This bug causes punctuation and letters to display incorrectly when combining English with right-to-left settings.

I've included you both in the bug report and will update this discussion as soon as we have any news to share.

We appreciate your patience and apologize if this has been slowing you down!