Terrible Arabic?

[Ryan of Tinellb]

This is from a Cadbury ad for orthodox Easter. To my I've-been-kinda-learning-the-Arabic-script eye, this looks reversed and unjoined. Can someone tell me what it says, and if it is indeed in Arabic itself, or one of its derivative writing systems?

Thank-you.

[Vijay]

It is indeed Arabic. It is supposed to read: !تهانينا للجميع بعيد الفصح المجيد

I think it basically means 'we wish everyone a happy Easter!'. More literally, it seems to be 'our greetings to all with (a) glorious holiday of Easter/Passover'.

[WeepingElf]

I guess someone typed it on a machine that got neither the direction nor the joining right, and then thought, "Wait - isn't Arabic meant to run from right to left?" - and mirrored the entire thing.

[Vijay]

I think some people just have bizarrely terrible Arabic font problems. I've seen similar problems (but with left-to-right letters instead of the mirror image) on packages of Indian snacks before.

[Arzena]

Oh wow, I've seen bad Arabic type but this is baaaaad

[Ducane]

Oh wow, I've seen bad Arabic type but this is baaaaad

Now google "bad arabic tattoos"

[zompist]

FWIW, I'm guessing this was a cut-and-paste problem (compounded by no one on production knowing what Arabic is supposed to look like). I remember cutting some Arabic text and pasting it into another program that couldn't handle it; it was converted to the same all-standalone-characters mess. I don't remember which program was the culprit, though.

[Moose-tache]

Oh hey, guys! I do communications for an Arab institution, as it happens, so I know aaaaall about text support. On the same OS with the same settings I can get different results from every app I have. The biggest problem is line breaks. Let's say you have an Arabic text that is broken up into three lines in the app you are using. You want to paste a link at the end, but where do you put it? A logical person would paste it to the left of the last line, i.e. the end of the text. And this will always result in a text that looks accurate while you are editing it. But certain apps process line breaks in such a way that this link will now appear in whatever arbitrary position the line break happened between the second and third lines. To make the link appear at the end of the text, you actually need to paste it to the right of the last line, i.e. smack dab in the middle of a sentence. It seems that every app, website, and email client has its own special way of butchering Arabic text, and I get to discover them all one at a time!

[Zaarin]

I don't remember which program was the culprit, though.

Photoshop? Photoshop garbled my Syriac.

[masako]

It's not always the program. Occasionally it's the font. They're rare these days, but there are still fonts that do not adjust for reading direction.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

When I started con-scripting, the only way I could find to get a right-to-left script was to use the codepoints for Thaana. Arabic would have worked, except for the automatic substitutions word processors make when creating the cursive. Nowadays, I can use the Unicode Right-to-Left markers and CSS `direction: rtl;`, which seem to work ok even when the underlying font is left-to-right.
I intend to have a vertical script one day, which will come with its own challenges.

[Vlürch]

Every time I see Arabic text where the letters aren't joined, especially in big-budget things, I get confused and annoyed to varying degrees. Although the only example I can think of right now is in the film Pitch Perfect 2, where at the end there's a banner with text in various languages and the Arabic letters don't join together, I'm sure I've seen the same in at least a dozen films and some music videos and whatnot. Googling it just now, apparently even fucking Arrival had it...

You'd think with all that money and time, they'd at least get someone who at least has an at least basic understanding of how the Arabic script works to at least give it a quick glance... but nope, that never seems to happen.

[Zaarin]

Googling it just now, apparently even fucking Arrival had it...

Arrival was probably my favorite film of the last ten years, but I was a little disappointed by the linguistics side. I wasn't expecting technical expertise, but more accurate details would have been nice. Still better than Hoshi Sato's linguobabble on Enterprise, though.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

Still better than Hoshi Sato's linguobabble on Enterprise, though.

I remember for a while, the Talk page of the Wikipedia article on the Klingon language was full of discussion as to whether Archer's explanation of "polygutteral dialects based on an adaptive syntax" should be included in that article.

Found it.

[Moose-tache]

Found it.

Sweet Jesus this is entertaining.
"All words are made-up. Some, like those in Klingon, have meanings attached. Others, like polyguttural, don't."

[masako]

Found it.

Sweet Jesus this is entertaining.
"All words are made-up. Some, like those in Klingon, have meanings attached. Others, like polyguttural, don't."

It's like listening to kids argue about whether fairies have wings or not...and what to call the wings.

[Zaarin]

Still better than Hoshi Sato's linguobabble on Enterprise, though.

I remember for a while, the Talk page of the Wikipedia article on the Klingon language was full of discussion as to whether Archer's explanation of "polygutteral dialects based on an adaptive syntax" should be included in that article.

Found it.

Wow. I almost feel a need to turn in my nerd card because I am unworthy.

[OmicronCancri]

This terrible Arabic is a result of not having the proper language pack installed in whatever application they're using while editing the advertisment. I am suspecting it was an Adobe product, as I had a similar encounter with some old iteration of Photoshop.

Edit: apologies if I seemed like necroposting.