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I was asked to help proofread an Arabic language (right-to-left) flyer with some English (left-to-right) text:

Right now it reads:

بطاقة المساعدة الغذائية
مقبولة من Local Farm Market
اسواق المزارعين هو مكان رائع لشراء الأطعمة المحلية ولرؤية مجتمعك
يجب على الجميع ان يكون لديهم مفتاح لطعام محلي طازج
للجميع بزيادة Local Farm Market الان يقبلون ببطاقة الطعام
الوصول إلى طعام محلي, صحي وطازج
اختبر السوق بنفسك!‏

I note that there is a difference between different rtl languages in terms of the different cultures and accepted norms in each. For example, in Hebrew, standard practice is to use a question mark facing the same way as in English. In Arabic, however, standard practice is to reverse the question mark's orientation.

First, I'm thinking that the second bolded line needs to be rearranged so that the English text is on the left. Is my instinct correct in that? Is that the most natural placement?

Second, in the main body of the flyer, I'm unsure if the placement of the English text (the name of the market) belongs after (=to the left of) the verbal phrase as it is currently, or before (=the right of) it.

As to the second issue above, I know that a subject can follow a verb in Arabic; I'm asking for the most natural composition for the reader.

Seth J
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    Similar: http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/3250/1756 – Seth J May 07 '13 at 15:20
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    Would the downvoter care to explain? – Seth J May 07 '13 at 20:19
  • The other question has an answer, but it is not the same language. The title there is much broader than the body of the question and does not acknowledge that every language is different. – Seth J May 08 '13 at 00:58
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    I suppose it's because the other question is generic, while you are asking about one specific example. Maybe you can rephrase the question in more general terms. –  May 08 '13 at 23:44
  • @arjan the other one is as specific as this one. It has the illusion of being generic because the title is generic, but the body itself is about a specific text. – Seth J May 09 '13 at 03:15
  • Sorry but this is not a question about the scientific study of human languages. If it's a question about bidirectional text on computers it might belong on Super User. If it's a question about how to position left-to-right text within a larger Arabic text then it would definitely belong on Arabic Language and Usage which is still in the proposal stage on Area51. – hippietrail Jun 01 '13 at 16:18
  • @hippietrail I fail to see a distinction, in that particular regard, between this question and the Hebrew one. (I still assert that any answer on that question (like (ahem) my answer there) provides little insight for this question,as they are different languages and have different reading cultures. – Seth J Jun 02 '13 at 23:45
  • Furthermore, the practice for embedding a rtl language within an English text may differ from embedding a ltr language within a rtl text. – Seth J Jun 02 '13 at 23:57
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    Then I wish you luck and patience in getting a linguistic answer from a linguist. Most computer implementations use a version of the standard Unicode bidi algorithm, which is known not to be perfect it's designed for plain text which encapsulates no knowledge of any languages, just strings of code points each of which has a few attributes that can be looked up in a table or database. Wikipedia also has an article on bidirectional text which may be informative. – hippietrail Jun 03 '13 at 05:09
  • @SethJ: I've just noticed the link to the previous Hebrew question and I have to agree with you that it seems totally arbitrary and unjustified for that one to have quite a few upvotes and this one to have downvotes. There's no good reason for this difference in my opinion, sorry )-: – hippietrail Jun 03 '13 at 07:36

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This looks like what happens if you try to type right-to-left text with a left-to-right word processor. Try copying it into the word processor of your choice and setting the paragraph writing direction to right-to-left, and it should come out correct.

hbarck
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