claude-arabic-writing
A skill for Claude that makes it write and translate Arabic that reads
correctly and naturally — grammatically sound, free of typos, idiomatic, and free of the
tell-tale signs of machine translation.
It covers Modern Standard Arabic (الفصحى) plus four major dialects — Egyptian, Levantine,
Gulf, and Maghrebi — distilling authoritative grammar, orthography, style, and localization
references into guidance Claude applies automatically while it writes.
Why you might want it
Out of the box, LLM Arabic often looks fluent but reads as translated: من قبل passives, قام
بـ + verbal noun, الخاص بك for every "your", drifting gender/number agreement, calqued
collocations, and Latin punctuation. This skill encodes the rules native editors apply, so the
Arabic Claude produces for you sounds like a person wrote it — not a machine.
With the skill installed, Claude will:
- Write original Arabic prose in the right register for your audience.
- Translate into Arabic (especially from English) by re-composing meaning, not transferring
English word-for-word.
- Edit / proofread Arabic for hamza, ة/ه, ى/ي, agreement, iḍāfa, numbers, punctuation,
collocations, and naturalness.
- Pick the right variety — formal MSA for documents, or a specific dialect for marketing and
conversational copy — without mixing them.
See it in action — أمثلة
Arabic below renders right-to-left. The ❌ column is typical machine/LLM output; the ✅ column
is what the skill steers Claude toward.
Removing the "machine-translated" tells
| English | ❌ Translationese | ✅ Natural Arabic |
|---|
| The plan was reviewed by the committee. | تمت مراجعة الخطة من قبل اللجنة | راجعت اللجنةُ الخطة |
| The company conducted a study of the market. | قامت الشركة بإجراء دراسة للسوق | أجرت الشركةُ دراسةً للسوق |
| Update your account. | قم بتحديث الحساب الخاص بك | حدِّث حسابك |
| The new cars are fast. | السيارات الجديدة سريعون | السيارات الجديدة سريعة |
| This tool is used to organize files. | يتم استخدام هذه الأداة لتنظيم الملفات | تُستخدَم هذه الأداة لتنظيم الملفات |
| The goal of the project is to raise awareness. | الهدف من المشروع هو رفع الوعي | يهدف المشروع إلى نشر الوعي |
Each ✅ fixes a specific tell: active voice instead of من قبل, a single verb instead of
قام بـ, an attached suffix instead of الخاص بـ, feminine-singular agreement for a non-human
plural, the internal passive instead of يتم, and a fronted verb instead of the copular calque.
Translating a full sentence (English → natural MSA)
English: We design, build, and operate the systems that mid-sized businesses rely on —
from cloud platforms to autonomous AI.
العربية: نُصمِّم الأنظمةَ التي تعتمد عليها الشركات المتوسطة ونبنيها ونُشغّلها — من المنصّات
السحابية إلى الذكاء الاصطناعي المستقلّ.
Note the verb-first sentence, the relative clause with a resumptive pronoun (التي تعتمد **عليها**), and the non-human plural الأنظمة taking التي.
The same message in MSA and each dialect
English: I want to go now — where's the restaurant?
| Variety | الترجمة |
|---|
| MSA (الفصحى) | أريد الذهاب الآن، فأين المطعم؟ |
| Egyptian (مصري) | عايز أروح دلوقتي، المطعم فين؟ |
| Levantine (شامي) | بدّي روح هلّق، وين المطعم؟ |
| Gulf (خليجي) | أبغى أروح الحين، وين المطعم؟ |
| Maghrebi (مغاربي) | بغيت نمشي دابا، فين المطعم؟ |
Notice how the verb, the word for "want", "now", and "where" all change per dialect — and that
Egyptian moves the question word to the end.
Proofreading
Input: انا ذهبت الى المدرسه , و قابلت ثلاث طلاب هناك
Corrected: أنا ذهبت إلى المدرسة، وقابلت ثلاثة طلاب هناك.
Fixes: انا → أنا and الى → إلى (hamza), المدرسه → المدرسة (ة), ثلاث → ثلاثة (number
polarity — a masculine counted noun takes the ة), plus the Arabic comma ، with no space before
it and the attached و.
Requirements
- Claude Code (or any client that supports Agent
Skills via a
SKILL.md).
git (to clone) — or you can download the repo as a ZIP.
Installation
For all your projects (personal)
git clone https://github.com/ahmeddabak/claude-arabic-writing.git
cp -r claude-arabic-writing/skills/arabic-writing ~/.claude/skills/arabic-writing
For a single project
git clone https://github.com/ahmeddabak/claude-arabic-writing.git
mkdir -p .claude/skills
cp -r claude-arabic-writing/skills/arabic-writing .claude/skills/arabic-writing
Start a new Claude Code session afterward so the skill is picked up. That's it — no build step,
no dependencies.
Usage
The skill activates automatically whenever you ask for Arabic. You don't need to mention it
by name. For example:
- "Translate this product description into natural MSA."
- "Rewrite this welcome message in Gulf Arabic for a Saudi audience."
- "Proofread this Arabic paragraph and list the fixes."
- "Say this in Egyptian Arabic: …"
- "This Arabic reads like a machine translated it — make it sound native."
You can also invoke it explicitly with /arabic-writing.
What's inside
skills/arabic-writing/
├── SKILL.md # entry point: workflow + correctness checklist + "AI smell test"
├── references/
│ ├── grammar.md # word order, إعراب, agreement, iḍāfa, numbers
│ ├── orthography.md # hamza, ة/ه, ى/ي, tanwin, punctuation, diacritics, typos
│ ├── translationese.md # machine-translation tells + English→Arabic pitfalls
│ ├── collocations.md # awkward-calque → natural tables + verb–preposition government
│ ├── register-and-style.md# register choice, connectors, naturalness, tone
│ ├── conventions.md # transliteration, numerals, dates, units, bidi
│ └── dialects/
│ ├── egyptian.md
│ ├── levantine.md
│ ├── gulf.md
│ └── maghrebi.md
└── evals/
└── evals.json # objective test cases
It's built on progressive disclosure: SKILL.md stays short (a workflow, a top-10
correctness checklist, and a "smell test" for machine-made Arabic), and the detailed rules live
in references/ files that Claude reads only when relevant — so the skill is thorough
without bloating Claude's context.
Testing it yourself
skills/arabic-writing/evals/evals.json contains objective test cases — each with a prompt and
checkable expected behaviors — covering agreement, the قام بـ / من قبل tells, possessives,
proofreading, register choice, dialect fidelity, and numbers/dates. Run any of them with and
without the skill to see the difference.
Caveats
- The bundled Arabic examples illustrate documented patterns; some pairs are constructed rather
than quoted. A native-speaker review is recommended before relying on the output for
published material.
- A few orthographic choices have more than one accepted convention (مسؤول/مسئول، مئة/مائة).
- For high-stakes localization, target a specific country (Egyptian, Saudi, Moroccan, …) rather
than "Arabic" in general.
Contributing
Issues and pull requests are welcome — corrections from native speakers and professional
translators especially. Good contributions include: additional calque→natural collocation pairs,
dialect refinements, and new eval cases that expose a failure mode.
License
MIT — free to use, modify, and redistribute.
