Arabic interpreting & translation services

Arabic is the official language of more than 20 countries and is spoken by roughly 400 million people from Morocco to Iraq. California has large Arabic-speaking communities in Los Angeles, Orange County's Little Arabia in Anaheim, El Cajon in San Diego County, and the Bay Area, representing Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Yemeni, and North African backgrounds.

Spoken Arabic varies widely by region. Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, Iraqi, Sudanese, and Maghrebi dialects can differ enough that a speaker from one region may struggle with another, while Modern Standard Arabic is used for writing, broadcasting, and formal speech. When you book with Focus Interpreting we ask where the speaker is from so we can assign an interpreter who shares or is fluent in that dialect. Arabic is a California court-designated language, and we provide court-certified and medically qualified Arabic interpreters.

Written Arabic runs right to left, which affects layout, page order, and typography in translated documents. Our certified Arabic translations of legal contracts, medical records, immigration paperwork, and government forms are delivered with a certificate of accuracy, and our desktop publishing team handles bidirectional text so the final document mirrors the original faithfully.