Right-to-left text: a layout problem with no published answers
Some scripts run from right to left, and a page in one has to mirror its whole layout rather than only its words. Nothing in this register states how any tool handles that in a subtitle or in text drawn inside a frame. As of 2026-09-22.
| Layer | What has to change | Addressed by anything published here |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing page | Layout mirrors, not just the words | Declared by three vendors |
| Generated document | Mixed direction inside one paragraph | No |
| Subtitle | Alignment, punctuation position, line order | No |
| Text inside the picture | Character shaping and joining | No |
Inclusion rule. The layers a right-to-left script affects, with whether any vendor page read for this register says anything about it. Order. Layer most often addressed first.
1Mirroring is more than translating
A page in a right-to-left script has to move its navigation, its icons, its progress indicators and its punctuation. Translating the strings and leaving the layout alone produces a page that is readable and visibly wrong.
Three vendors here declare a right-to-left language among their site alternates. Whether those pages are mirrored is not something a declaration can say, and it is the kind of thing a spot check would find in a second.
2Mixed direction inside one line is the hard case
A right-to-left sentence containing a Latin product name, a number or a time code has to lay out in two directions at once. Getting that wrong reverses parts of a line in ways that change the meaning.
Generated documents are full of exactly that: character names, shot numbers, durations. No vendor in this register publishes anything about the language of its generated documents at all, let alone their direction.
3In a picture it cannot be fixed later
Characters in several right-to-left scripts change shape depending on their neighbours, and a model that draws them as separate glyphs produces something no reader accepts. Subtitles cannot reach text inside a picture.
So for these scripts the advice that follows from this register is to keep legible text out of generated frames entirely, because nothing published would let a producer predict the result.
A definition, not a measurement: no vendor figure appears here that is not also in the register. The three vendors declaring a right-to-left site language are listed on that language page.
Nearby terms: Writing system, Diacritic. The whole vocabulary is at terms; nothing on this page is a claim about a named product.