Bild’s Broken Arabic

Diagnosis: Unconnected Letters

In a truly puzzling oversight, the online edition of Germany’s Bild-Zeitung (bild.de) – the biggest newspaper in Germany – featured a headline on October 5, 2025, that suffered from a total technical collapse.

As a ‘Global Reporter’ with truly impressive Arabic skills – which I can personally attest to – Constantin Schreiber must have been blindsided by the headline accompanying his video message, a choice likely made by the media department rather than the reporter himself.

While the content likely aimed for a serious tone, the visual presentation was a disaster: the Arabic script was rendered left-to-right and every single letter stood in its isolated form, floating without connection.

Arabic text in question

Arabic text as it should be

Analysis

This fail is a classic example of what happens when modern web layout engines aren’t properly configured for RTL (Right-to-Left) languages.

• Directional Reversal: The entire sentence was treated as if it were English or German, starting from the left. This turns the meaningful phrase into a phonetic soup that no native speaker can read at a glance.
• Disconnected Letters: Arabic is a cursive script; letters change shape based on their position (initial, medial, final). Here, the system defaulted to “isolated” forms, which is the equivalent of writing an English word like “APPLE” as “A P P L E” but backwards: “E L P P A”.

Remark about ضِدَّ: Because it functions as a spatial adverb (ظَرْف مَكَان), it is inherently in the accusative case (مَنْصُوب) with a فَتْحَة unless it is preceded by another preposition.

The Irony Factor

The most striking part of this error is the context. The headline features Constantin Schreiber, an award-winning journalist who has hosted shows for Deutsche Welle TV in Arabic.

It is highly likely that Schreiber provided the correct text, only for the “digital machine” at the publishing house to mangle it during the upload process. For a major media outlet like Bild, failing to perform a simple visual check on a language spoken by millions in Germany – especially when their own reporter is an expert in it – is a significant lapse in quality control.

Source: Internet

URL: https://bild.de

Time the picture was taken:  2025-10-05

Credit
Picture credit: Screenshot bild.de (taken by Gerald Drißner)
Added: 01/11/2026 Gerald Drißner

Note: You don’t use diacritics (تشكيل)in everyday Arabic. We use them here to clearly explain the grammar, spelling, and meaning of words. To avoid confusion, we generally ignore auxiliary vowels that are necessary for pronunciation to avoid consonant clusters.

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