Broadcast Graphics in Arabic RTL: A Technical Walkthrough for Saudi League Tournaments

Arabic broadcast graphics are not a translation problem — they're a layout problem. Numbers in Arabic run left-to-right inside an RTL container. Score order ("3-2" or "٣-٢"?) follows the team-order convention of the league, not the language. Player-name baselines have different ascender heights. Get one of these wrong and your broadcast looks like a Western product with Arabic labels stapled on.

The bidi resolution problem

HTML's Unicode bidi algorithm gets the order of digit groups wrong by default in mixed RTL/LTR content. "Player 7 scored at 23'" in Arabic should render with the player's number after their name, the minute marker before the apostrophe, with the apostrophe glyph mirrored. None of that happens automatically. The scoring platform has to emit explicit RLM/LRM markers and pre-shape the digit string.

Score-order convention

Saudi Pro League and Egyptian Premier League broadcasts conventionally show home team first, away team second — but the visual order in RTL is reversed. So "Al-Hilal 3 - 1 Al-Nassr" in English mirrors to "النصر ١ - ٣ الهلال" in Arabic. If you simply mirror the English layout you've reversed the team order, which is a viewer-confusion incident.

Player name baselines

Arabic script has descenders and ascenders that don't align with Latin script. A name like "محمد صلاح" sits visually higher than "Mohamed Salah" in the same point size. The lower-third graphic template has to account for this — either by font-metric-aware vertical centering or by separate Arabic-language templates.

What we ship for Saudi clients

Skyline's Arabic-mode broadcast graphics pipeline includes RLM/LRM auto-insertion, separate Arabic/English template files, font-metric-aware vertical baseline correction, and a per-league config for score-order convention. Operators just enter the data — the rendering is correct without intervention.