Arabic subtitles with punctuation on the wrong side
A question mark at the start of an Arabic sentence instead of the end, a dash hanging after the dialogue, a period on the right: these are direction problems, not spelling mistakes. Upload the subtitle file, and punctuation that was moved to the front is put back at the end, the dialogue dash goes to the start, and every line gets an invisible right-to-left mark so players lay it out correctly. Jobs with up to 3,000 lines are free in full; a season is $5.
- Reversed punctuation such as ".مرحبا" or "?كيف حالك" put back at the end
- Dialogue dash moved from the end of the line to the start
- Applied only when the file shows that pattern, so normal files are not disturbed
- Invisible right-to-left mark at both ends of every line; optional
- ? , ; turned into ؟ ، ؛; numbers such as 1,000 untouched
Why it happens
A line of Arabic is stored in reading order: first word first, punctuation last. Laying it out on screen is the player's job. A player that treats the line as left-to-right text puts the Arabic words in the right order but leaves the final question mark or period on the right side, which for an Arabic reader is the beginning of the sentence.
Years ago, many subtitle makers worked around this by moving punctuation to the front of each line in the file, so that it looked right in those players. On players that handle right-to-left text properly, such as many current versions of Plex, Infuse, Kodi, Apple TV apps and smart TVs, the same file now shows the punctuation at the start. Which symptom you see depends on the file and on the player, so the fix has to deal with both.
What the repair does
- Checks the whole file first: if the Arabic lines start with punctuation more often than they end with it, the file is treated as reversed.
- In a reversed file, moves leading punctuation back to the end and a trailing dialogue dash back to the start.
- In a normal file, leaves punctuation where it is, so a deliberate "..." at the start of a line survives.
- Removes old direction control characters and adds a right-to-left mark at the start and end of each line, which makes players lay the line out right to left.
- Keeps the Arabic letters ي and ك as they are and leaves tags such as <i> and {\an8} untouched.
If something still looks wrong
Some older TVs and players do not know the right-to-left mark and draw it as a small box at each end of the line. If you see that, run the file again with the marks left out; the punctuation repair still applies. If every letter is a box, the device has no Arabic font, which no subtitle file can fix. Lines that mix Arabic with English names or numbers are kept as written; the mark helps players place them, but very mixed lines can still look different from one player to another.
How the tool works, what it costs and how your files are handled is on the Fix Persian & Arabic Subtitles page; prices for every tool are on the pricing page.
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Questions and answers
Can ChatGPT fix Arabic punctuation in subtitles?
For a few lines you paste, it can usually move the punctuation correctly. A full film is hundreds or thousands of lines, the invisible direction marks do not survive copy and paste reliably, and long replies tend to stop partway or alter time codes. This tool repairs every line and keeps the timings.
Will it break files that are already correct?
No. Punctuation is moved only when the file as a whole shows the reversed pattern. In a correct file only the direction marks and Arabic punctuation marks are added.
Does it work for Persian, Urdu and Hebrew too?
Yes. Choose the language before uploading. Hebrew keeps Latin punctuation, and Persian, Dari, Urdu and Sorani also get their own forms of ی and ک.
What does it cost?
Free in full for jobs with up to 3,000 lines in total. A bigger job, such as a season in a ZIP, is $5, paid once, for up to 50 files.
Which formats can I upload?
SRT, VTT, ASS, SSA, MicroDVD SUB and SAMI, or a ZIP of them. Each file comes back in its own format, except SAMI, which comes back as SRT.