Right-to-left languages — Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Urdu, and others — are written and read from right to left. Localizing into them is not translation with a text-direction flag: the entire visual and technical logic of the page or document mirrors.
Layouts flip horizontally. Navigation, progress indicators, carousels, and charts that imply sequence run the other way. Icons that suggest direction — arrows, back buttons — must be mirrored, while symmetric icons and clocks must not. Numbers, dates, and embedded Latin words stay left-to-right inside the RTL flow, creating bidirectional text that must be handled explicitly or punctuation lands in the wrong place.
Print adds script requirements: Arabic is cursive, with contextual letterforms and ligatures, so typesetting needs proper OpenType shaping — typically InDesign ME with licensed Arabic fonts — and line-breaking rules differ completely from Latin text.
Done badly, RTL localization is instantly obvious to native readers: broken punctuation, unmirrored layouts, disconnected letters. Done well, it is invisible — the page simply feels native. MediaLocalize builds and typesets RTL as a core specialty, from mirrored websites to Arabic InDesign brochures, with native QA on every deliverable.