You have an English video and an Arabic audience, or an Arabic video and an English one. The usual question is what it costs to add Arabic. That question hides the real decision, because there is no single thing called an Arabic version.
There is a ladder. Subtitles sit on the bottom rung, a voiceover on the middle rung, and full localisation on the top. Each rung costs more than the one below, and each is right in a different situation. In our own pricing, Arabic subtitles added to a finished video start from around AED 300, a professional Arabic voiceover track starts from around AED 550, and full localisation, meaning voiceover plus rebuilt on-screen text and graphics, starts from around AED 1,500 [15]. No government body, regulator or platform publishes rates for this work, so these are our own figures rather than a market survey. Final pricing depends on scope.
In the briefs we see, the choice usually goes wrong in one of two directions. Some buy a full dub for a narrated corporate film that Arabic subtitles would have carried perfectly well. Others buy subtitles for a video whose screen is covered in English headlines, price tables and end cards, which subtitles cannot touch. This guide is about picking the right rung, and then getting the Arabic craft right once you have.
Arabic subtitles, voiceover or full localisation: the ladder
| Rung | What you actually get | Starts from |
|---|---|---|
| Subtitles | Original audio kept, Arabic text track added | AED 300 |
| Voiceover | New Arabic audio track over or replacing the original | AED 550 |
| Full localisation | Arabic audio plus rebuilt on-screen text and graphics | AED 1,500 |
Subtitles are the cheapest and the safest. Your original voice, music and mix stay exactly as approved. Nothing in the edit gets reopened. They suit interview films, testimonial cuts, event recaps, and any piece where the viewer is sitting still long enough to read. Extra languages later cost little, because the picture never changes.
A voiceover is right when the viewer will not read. That covers most social feeds, most in-store and lobby screens, and most product films watched on a phone with one thumb. It is also right when the original narrator is generic rather than a brand asset. If the person on camera is your CEO and the audience knows their face, replacing their voice may cost you more credibility than the Arabic gains you.
Full localisation is the rung we most often see under-bought. It is only worth the money when the on-screen text carries meaning: pricing tables, product specifications, feature comparisons, and call-to-action end cards. If those stay in English, the Arabic subtitle track underneath them reads as a courtesy rather than a version. If the screen has nothing but a logo and a lower third, skip this rung entirely.
A quick test. Mute your video and watch it. Everything you can still read on screen is information subtitles will not translate. If muting the video leaves you understanding almost nothing, subtitles or a voiceover will carry the whole message.
Captions, subtitles and SDH are three different products
Captions carry the dialogue plus the sound information a viewer needs, subtitles carry the dialogue only in another language, and SDH combines both for viewers who cannot hear the audio. The W3C draws the line properly. Captions carry the spoken content plus the non-dialogue audio information a viewer needs to follow the programme, including sound effects, music and speaker identification. Subtitles carry the dialogue only, usually in a different language, and assume the viewer can hear the audio but cannot understand it [1].
Then there is SDH, subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. Netflix defines it as a track that looks and is formatted like a subtitle track but carries the same content as captions, for viewers who cannot hear the audio at all [6]. Closed captioning in the same set of definitions is the legacy broadcast term with its own narrower character limits and display mechanics.
Why this matters commercially: an English caption track and an Arabic subtitle track on the same video are two deliverables at two prices. A vendor who quotes captions and delivers subtitles may simply have used the word loosely. Get it named in the quote.
Voiceover, dubbing and lip-sync are a spectrum, not synonyms
Voiceover lays the translated audio over or alongside the original, with approximate timing and no attempt to match mouth movement. It is the normal choice for corporate narration and explainers. Dubbing replaces the original audio entirely and is timed to scene pacing and line length. Lip-sync dubbing goes further, phrasing every line so it matches the speaker's mouth movements on screen.
How seriously professionals take this distinction shows in the Netflix delivery specifications, which require either lip-sync or voice-over dubbing depending on the content and language, and permit lectern-style dubbing, where one narrator reads every character, only for Polish or Vietnamese [5]. That is a platform's house rule rather than a law, but it tells you the industry treats the single-narrator shortcut as a special case, not the default.
For most UAE corporate video the answer is voiceover. Lip-sync only earns its cost when there is a tight on-camera speaker who has to feel native rather than translated, which in practice means character animation and a small number of talking-head pieces heading for broadcast. Our explainer video production guide covers where character work changes the maths.
Modern Standard Arabic vs Gulf dialect: how to choose
Use Modern Standard Arabic for written subtitles and formal audio, and a Gulf dialect read for spoken consumer content aimed at UAE and Gulf viewers.
Modern Standard Arabic, or Fusha, is the formal written register used in news, government and professional communication. Nobody speaks it at home. That is exactly why it works: it reads as neutral, institutional and pan-regional, understood by educated speakers in every Arabic-speaking market. The Netflix Arabic style guide is blunt about it for written subtitles, requiring Modern Standard Arabic only and asking translators to avoid dialectal words [3]. Our own RTL website guide reaches the same split for web copy.
Gulf Arabic, or Khaleeji, is the spoken register of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. It reads as closer to a specific viewer. It is a voice choice, not a text choice.
Egyptian Arabic carries the widest spoken recognition across the Arab world because of Egypt's long dominance in film and broadcast. It is a sensible pick for consumer content aimed at a broad Arab audience rather than the Gulf specifically.
Levantine Arabic fits when the audience is specifically Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian or Palestinian. It is rarely the default for a UAE-based advertiser.
Now the decision rule. Split it by written versus spoken, then by audience width.
Written subtitles go to Modern Standard Arabic almost every time. A subtitle track has to be read comfortably by whoever ends up watching, including the Saudi distributor, the Egyptian agency and the Emirati procurement officer. Dialect in text buys warmth you cannot see and costs reach you can measure.
Spoken audio is where dialect earns its place. Ask two questions. First, is this content people watch by choice or content they have to sit through? Consumer, retail, food, entertainment and social content is chosen, and a warm local read helps. Compliance, finance, healthcare, safety and government-facing content is endured, and formality signals authority. Second, how wide is the audience? One market means dialect is safe. Six markets and a Modern Standard Arabic read stops anyone feeling like a secondary audience.
That leaves a common pairing that looks inconsistent and is not: a Gulf-dialect voiceover with Modern Standard Arabic subtitles on the same video. The spoken track sounds local, the written track reads everywhere. Deciding that deliberately is the mark of a brief that knows what it wants.
Arabic subtitle formats: SRT, WebVTT and UTF-8
Three families of format matter, and only two of them have a standards body.
SRT is the common interchange format, accepted almost everywhere, and it came out of a desktop ripping tool rather than a specification process. There is no standards organisation publishing an SRT spec, and the format carries no styling and no positioning. YouTube lists it in the basic tier of its supported caption formats, alongside SubViewer, MPsub, LRC and Videotron Lambda, and states these must be plain UTF-8 with no styling markup recognised [12].
WebVTT is a real W3C specification. It requires UTF-8, supports cue positioning, and, most relevant here, specifies how bidirectional text is handled: the base direction of each line is determined from the first strong directional character, and where automatic detection gets it wrong the author can insert an explicit left-to-right or right-to-left mark at the start of the line to correct it [7]. That is a standards-level answer to the single most common Arabic subtitle bug.
TTML2 is a W3C Recommendation, an XML format with full styling, layout and positioning [8], and IMSC 1 is a W3C Recommendation that profiles TTML specifically for interoperable internet subtitle and caption delivery [9]. This is broadcast and streaming territory. Most marketing video never needs it.
Underneath all of them sits the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm, Unicode Standard Annex 9, a normative part of the Unicode Standard required wherever right-to-left scripts are rendered [10]. It defines how mixed Arabic and Latin text is ordered for display versus how it is stored, and it defines the mark characters used to correct ambiguous cases. When an English product name inside an Arabic line lands in the wrong place, that is not a platform quirk. It is bidirectional resolution behaving exactly as specified on text that did not tell it enough.
Numerals are the other trap. The W3C Arabic and Persian layout requirements document distinguishes Arabic-Indic digits, Eastern Arabic-Indic digits and Western digits, and notes that they are classified differently for bidirectional purposes [11]. Three numeral systems, three ordering behaviours, one line of subtitle. Pick one system for the whole project and say so in the brief.
The Netflix Arabic style guide is the most concrete published document available on the writing side, and it goes further than most agencies do: numbers one to ten written out in letters, numerals above that, commas as thousands separators, a decimal point with a leading zero, and no Latin letters inside Arabic subtitles at all, with websites and email addresses transliterated into Arabic characters inside quotation marks [3]. You do not have to adopt every rule. You do have to decide, rather than let the translator decide silently.
Do Arabic subtitles need more time on screen?
Arabic subtitles do not automatically need longer on screen than English ones, and the clearest published figure available points the other way.
The Netflix Arabic timed text style guide sets a reading-speed ceiling of 20 characters per second for adult content and 17 for children, with SDH allowed 23 and 20, plus a maximum of 42 characters per line and two lines per subtitle event [3]. Its general timed text requirements set a minimum event duration of five sixths of a second and a maximum of seven seconds [4]. The Arabic adult ceiling of 20 characters per second sits above the rule-of-thumb figure usually applied to English subtitling, which is a working convention rather than a published standard.
Be careful with what that means. It is one platform's house standard for its own catalogue, not a universal rule, and it does not prove that Arabic reads faster. It does mean the assumption that Arabic always needs more time on screen is not supported by the clearest number in public. What does complicate an Arabic line is connected letterforms, elongation and mixed Latin or numeral runs, which the W3C layout requirements document describes as distinct mechanisms the script uses to manage line length [11]. That is a line-construction problem rather than a duration problem, which is a line-construction problem rather than a duration problem.
Accessibility, and what UAE rules actually say
We found no UAE rule requiring captions on private marketing video, and WCAG is the citable standard to aim for when you caption anyway. Success criterion 1.2.2 requires captions for all prerecorded audio in synchronised media at Level A, with an exception where the media is a clearly labelled alternative for text [1]. Criterion 1.2.4 requires captions for live audio at Level AA [2]. That is a real, international technical standard you can write into a brief.
On UAE law, be precise. We found no UAE requirement for captions or subtitles on private commercial marketing video. The UAE National Policy for Digital Accessibility contains no mention of captions or subtitles anywhere in its text, and its stated scope covers federal government ministries, authorities and institutions, plus semi-government entities, consultants, private companies, partners, contractors and service providers when they are engaged in digital transactions with a government entity [13]. That is a scope built around government digital services, not around a private brand advertising film.
The version of WCAG referenced is not settled either. The National Policy text requires all public service sites to comply with Level AA of WCAG 2.1, while the TDRA published digital accessibility statement cites WCAG 2.2 Level AA for TDRA's own platforms [13][14]. Two official documents, two versions.
If your video is part of government work or a tender submission, confirm the captioning position with the relevant authority rather than assuming either way. If it is your own marketing video, treat captions as good practice with a real standard behind them. We give practical production guidance, not legal advice.
Arabic voiceover and subtitling cost in Dubai
Our own figures, one more time, because they are the reason most people opened this page [15]:
- Arabic subtitles added to an existing video: from around AED 300
- A professional Arabic voiceover track: from around AED 550
- Full localisation, voiceover plus rebuilt on-screen text and graphics: from around AED 1,500
The AED 550 voiceover figure is the same one we publish in our video production cost guide and our motion graphics pricing guide, so you are not comparing three different versions of us. No official body publishes rates for Arabic voiceover or subtitling, and the figures circulating online trace back to freelancer listings rather than to any regulator or standards body. These are our own commercial figures, not a market survey. Final pricing depends on scope.
Two things move the number more than anything else. First, whether translation is included or you are supplying an approved Arabic script. Second, when you decide. Subtitles bolt cleanly onto a locked edit. Anything touching on-screen text needs the project reopened, and if the graphics were flattened, rebuilt.
Real client stories
Anonymised situations from our work, details changed.
A professional services firm asked for a full Arabic dub of a nine-minute leadership film. We watched it first. It was a founder speaking to camera for most of the run time. Dubbing over a face the audience recognised would have cost more and felt less honest. We recommended Modern Standard Arabic subtitles instead, and put the saved budget into a proper transcreation pass on the script. The Arabic version cost a fraction of the dub quote, and the founder's voice stayed in the room.
A retail brand bought Arabic subtitles for a product video and came back unhappy. The subtitles were correct. The problem was that the video had eleven on-screen callouts, a comparison table and an English end card, all of which the subtitles could not touch. The Arabic viewer read a translated voice while looking at an English screen. The fix was the top rung, rebuilding the graphics and mirroring the layout, which is a graphics job rather than a language job.
A government-facing consultancy needed one Arabic version for six markets. Their agency had recorded a warm Gulf-dialect read for a compliance explainer. It sounded friendly and landed wrong with two of the six audiences. We re-recorded in Modern Standard Arabic and kept the dialect read for the UAE social cut only. Same script, two audio tracks, one clear rule about which goes where.
How SKIMBOX approaches Arabic versions
We start by asking what the viewer will be doing when they watch, then recommend the lowest rung of the ladder that actually does the job. We scope subtitles, voiceover and full localisation as separate lines so you can see exactly what each one adds. We deliver subtitle files as proper tracks in UTF-8, not text baked into the picture, unless you specifically need burned-in text for a screen with no player controls. We name the Arabic register in the brief, Modern Standard Arabic or dialect, before anything is recorded rather than after. And where a video is heading for a bilingual life, we say so at brief stage, because that is where the cost is decided.
We also handle the adjacent pieces: social cuts in both languages, podcast and audio work, and the Arabic search side when the video is meant to bring people to an Arabic page.
See our media production services and animation and motion graphics services, or contact us for an itemised Arabic proposal. Final pricing depends on scope.
References
[1] W3C Web Accessibility Initiative - Understanding Success Criterion 1.2.2: Captions (Prerecorded), Level A, and the definition distinguishing captions from subtitles. w3.org
[2] W3C Web Accessibility Initiative - Understanding Success Criterion 1.2.4: Captions (Live), Level AA. w3.org
[3] Netflix Partner Help Center - Arabic Timed Text Style Guide: Modern Standard Arabic requirement, 42 characters per line, two-line maximum, characters-per-second ceilings, numeral formatting, and the rule against Latin letters in Arabic subtitles. partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com
[4] Netflix Partner Help Center - Timed Text Style Guide: General Requirements, minimum and maximum subtitle event duration. partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com
[5] Netflix Partner Help Center - Localization, Accessibility, and Dubbing Branded Delivery Specifications, including lip-sync and voice-over dubbing requirements and the lectern-style exception. partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com
[6] Netflix Partner Help Center - What is the difference between subtitles, SDH and CC? partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com
[7] W3C - WebVTT: The Web Video Text Tracks Format, UTF-8 requirement, cue positioning, base direction detection and direction mark override. w3.org
[8] W3C - Timed Text Markup Language 2 (TTML2), W3C Recommendation, 8 November 2018. w3.org
[9] W3C - TTML Profiles for Internet Media Subtitles and Captions (IMSC), W3C Recommendation, 24 April 2018. w3.org
[10] Unicode Consortium - Unicode Standard Annex 9, Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm. unicode.org
[11] W3C Internationalization - Arabic and Persian Layout Requirements, numeral systems and their bidirectional classifications. w3.org
[12] YouTube Help - Supported subtitle and closed caption files, format tiers and the plain UTF-8 requirement for basic formats. support.google.com
[13] UAE National Policy for Digital Accessibility, March 2024 - scope of application and scope of application and the WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance requirement for public service sites. u.ae
[14] Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA), UAE - Digital Accessibility Statement, WCAG 2.2 Level AA. tdra.gov.ae
[15] SKIMBOX - Our own pricing and internal experience delivering Arabic subtitling, voiceover and full video localisation from Dubai, 2026. skimbox.co
