How to translate an image to Arabic and get a document you can edit

Who needs an English document in Arabic?

The request usually comes from one of two directions. A family in the US or the UK wants a relative abroad to read a school report, a medical letter or a court notice. Or someone moving to the Gulf, Egypt or Jordan has to show an English diploma, reference letter or bank statement to an office that works in Arabic.

In both cases the reader wants a document, not a picture with Arabic painted over it. They will print it, mark it up or forward it. That is the job LoreAI does: photo in, Arabic Word file out.

How to translate an English photo to Arabic with LoreAI

1. Save the image as JPG, PNG or PDF. A phone photo, a screenshot or a flatbed scan all work. Put the pages of one document into one PDF.
2. Type your email at the top of this page. The 6-digit code we send opens LoreAI with Arabic already chosen. Your first document is free, up to 3 pages and 3 MB.
3. Choose OCR + Translate. English is detected automatically. Arabic is already set as the target.
4. Download the Arabic .docx file. Headings, lists and tables come back in the order of the original page, with the text as Arabic you can select and edit.

Setting right-to-left direction in Word

Arabic letters in the file read right to left on their own. The paragraph direction, which decides which side lines start on and the order of table columns, is a Word setting.

1. Turn on Arabic as an editing language. The Right-to-left button appears only when a right-to-left language is enabled in Office[1].
2. Select the text and click Right-to-left. The button sits in the Paragraph group on the Home tab[1]. Press Ctrl+A first to set the whole document.
3. Check the tables. For a table that should run from right to left, open Table Properties and set the table direction too.

Google Docs and Pages have the same control in their paragraph settings, so the file works there as well.

Numbers, dates and names in the Arabic file

Digits

Kept as printed, so a phone number, an account number or a grade such as 3.8 reads exactly as in the English original

Dates

Kept as written, month first on a US document, so 06/11/2025 stays 06/11/2025. Write the month name next to any date the reader will act on

Tables

A transcript or a bank statement comes back as a Word table with every row in place

Free ways to translate a picture to Arabic

Google Translate's Images tab in a computer browser lets you choose the language to translate to, then copy the translated text or download the translated image[2]. Google says the result depends on the clarity of the text and recommends clear images with commonly used fonts[2]. DeepL's desktop and mobile apps translate text from BMP, PNG, JPG, TIFF and GIF images, with 1500 characters a day on the free plan[3].

These suit a sign, a label or a chat screenshot. For a page with tables, a translated picture is hard to correct and hard to print cleanly. LoreAI returns the Arabic as a Word document.

Documents for an office in an Arabic-speaking country

Ministries, courts and embassies in Arabic-speaking countries set their own rules for translated documents. Ask the receiving office which form it accepts before you order anything.

LoreAI is not a certified or sworn translation service. Its Word file is a working translation the reader can use right away, and a draft a licensed translator can start from. For the other direction, Arabic into English, see translating an Arabic image to English, and to copy Arabic text out of a picture, use Arabic OCR.

Questions people ask