Arabic Tattoo Checker: Catch Stencil Errors Before the Ink

An Arabic tattoo can go wrong in two places: the translation and the stencil. The letters of a word must join and run from right to left, in plain Arabic characters. Presentation forms and Persian letters copied in from other software usually break that. Paste your text below to check it, then compare it with the artist's stencil.

No Arabic keyboard? Type the words on our online Arabic keyboard and paste them in.

30 Arabic tattoo phrases, vowelled and checked

These are 30 Arabic tattoo ideas, words and phrases people choose for a tattoo in Arabic, each fully vowelled, with a transliteration and a literal meaning. Every form was checked against its English Wiktionary entry, Quran.com, or a page on this site that already uses it. Where the Arabic changes for a man or a woman, both forms are given, and the checker's list holds the same 30.

Transliteration follows the scheme of our alphabet chart: a line over a long vowel, a dot under an emphatic letter, ʿ for ʿayn and ʾ for a hamza inside a word.

The proverb also appears on our page of Arabic proverbs with its Egyptian pronunciation, is-sabr muftah il-faraj. The Quranic line is verse 6 of Surah al-Sharḥ on Quran.com, copied in the plain spelling with its vowel marks. The marks matter most in three rows. Wiktionary's entry for حلم lists the dream, the forbearance and the ticks under the same three letters, and its entry for قدر lists fate beside the cooking pot. A reader takes the meaning from context, and a tattoo has none. If you want a name rather than a word, our tool for writing your name in Arabic gives a spelling for each name.

The mistakes that ruin Arabic tattoos

A correct translation can still come out wrong on skin if it breaks on the way from the screen to the stencil: the letters come apart, run backwards, or are swapped for characters that look alike. The checker above flags every one of these, and the table says what each looks like on skin.

Unjoined letters have a technical cause. Unicode, the standard behind every Arabic character on a screen, gives each letter one code, and the font draws the right shape for its place in the word. The old "presentation form" codes store each shape separately, and the Unicode Consortium's Arabic FAQ says they are encoded for compatibility only and not recommended for regular Arabic text. Programs that meet them often print each letter alone. The two presentation-form blocks hold 797 assigned codes, and Unicode's standard compatibility mapping (NFKC) turns 731 of them back into plain letters, which is what the checker does. The rest are symbols, ornaments and a few special characters. The full list is in the Unicode chart for Arabic Presentation Forms-B.

Each letter has up to four shapes, depending on whether it joins the letter before it, the letter after it, both or neither. Our alphabet chart with all four letter forms shows every one, and the checker's letter-by-letter table tells you which shape each letter of your text should take. The six letters ا د ذ ر ز و never join the letter after them, so a gap after one of them is correct and a gap anywhere else is an error.

How to check an Arabic tattoo translation

Check three things in order: that the words mean what you think, that their form fits the person, and that the characters survive the trip to the stencil. A native speaker settles the first two. The checker settles the third.

1. Start from a source. Take the phrase from a dictionary entry, a published text or a native speaker, not from a sentence typed into a translation app. An app picks one sense of an English word for you, and "strength" or "love" each has more than one Arabic word.
2. Read it with its vowel marks. Arabic is usually printed without short vowels and the reader fills them in from context. A tattoo has no context, so the vowel marks decide the word.
3. Check the form for the person. Arabic marks gender in "you", in verbs and in many nouns. A tattoo about your daughter needs the feminine form.
4. Run the checker. Paste the exact text you will send the artist. Go on only when it says no problems found, and send the corrected text, not the original.
5. Compare the stencil. Hold the artist's stencil next to the checker's two panels. The first letter must be on the right, the letters inside each word must touch, and the dots must match.
6. Have it read aloud. Ask a native speaker to read the stencil, not the screen, out loud. If what you hear matches the transliteration, the stencil is right.

The fifth step catches the stencil problems in the table above. To train your eye for it, practise how letters join with the word-builder game: it gives you a word's letters loose and joins them as you tap them in order.

Is it okay to get an Arabic tattoo? Meaning, permanence and placement

Anyone can get an Arabic tattoo. The questions worth settling first are practical: what the words will say to people who read them, whether you will still want them in twenty years, and where on the body they sit. Whether tattoos are permitted in Islam is a question for a scholar, and this page does not answer it.

Arabic speakers read a tattoo the way you read English on someone's arm, word by word and at face value. A phrase that sounds poetic in translation may read as plain or odd in Arabic, so ask a native reader how the words come across, not only whether they are spelled right. Text that contains the word Allāh, or a line of the Quran, is read as religious text. Where it sits, and whether it will be on show in a mosque or at a family meal, is part of the decision.

Prefer Modern Standard Arabic for anything permanent. It is the form every Arabic reader learns at school, while a slang word from one country can read as a joke elsewhere or go out of fashion. Names are the exception: a name is spelled the way its owner spells it.

Choosing a lettering style

Pick the lettering after the text is right, then check the final artwork again. Calligraphic styles stack letters, stretch joins and move dots for balance, so a native speaker should read the finished design, not only the typed text.

To compare styles before you see the artist, our Arabic calligraphy generator draws your phrase in 12 fonts and saves a PNG, and our page of 16 Arabic fonts with live previews shows the same text in plain and decorative faces. The Eid Mubarak card maker is another way to see Arabic drawn correctly joined at a large size. Whatever you choose, take the checker's corrected text with you, and ask for the stencil to be made from it.

Frequently asked questions

Is it okay to get an Arabic tattoo?

Anyone can get one, and the practical questions are meaning, permanence and context. Arabic speakers will read it literally, so the words must say what you mean, in the right form for a man or a woman. A Quranic verse or a phrase with the word Allah is read as religious text, so think about placement. Whether tattoos are allowed in Islam is a question for a scholar, not for this page.

How do I check an Arabic tattoo translation?

Start from a checked source, not a translation app. Keep the vowel marks, because unvowelled حلم can be ḥulm (dream) or ḥalam (ticks). Choose the form for the person the words address. Paste the text into the checker on this page until it says no problems found. Then ask a native speaker to read the artist's stencil aloud before anything is inked.

What are popular Arabic tattoos?

Single words lead: أَمَل amal (hope), حُبّ ḥubb (love), صَبْر ṣabr (patience), قُوَّة quwwa (strength) and حُرِّيَّة ḥurriyya (freedom). Next come short phrases such as الصَّبْرُ مِفْتَاحُ الْفَرَجِ (patience is the key to relief), names of family members such as أُمِّي ummī (my mother), and Quran 94:6, إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا. The table on this page gives 30, each vowelled and checked.

What does an Arabic tattoo symbolize?

An Arabic tattoo means what its words say. Arabic letters carry no hidden meaning of their own, and anyone who reads Arabic will read the tattoo as a sentence, the way an English speaker reads English. The script is often chosen for its look, but the meaning comes from the words: pick them for what they say.

Why do the letters in my Arabic tattoo design look separated?

Because the program that made the design could not shape Arabic, or the text was stored as presentation forms, old pre-shaped letter codes that many programs print unjoined and sometimes left to right. Arabic letters must join inside a word and run from right to left. Paste the text into the checker: it converts presentation forms back to plain letters and shows the correct and the broken version side by side.

Keep learning Arabic

• Arabic Vocabulary Lists & Anki DecksFour free Arabic vocabulary lists: Al Kitaab, A New Arabic Grammar, Quran ayat and the 99 Names, each as a printable file and a ready-made Anki deck.
• Arabic Transliteration: Convert Arabic, Arabizi and English LettersFree Arabic to English transliteration tool: turn Arabic script into plain English letters, Arabizi or ALA-LC, plus a chart of four systems for every letter.
• Free Arabic Writing Worksheets for All 28 LettersFree Arabic alphabet worksheets: a printable PDF for each of the 28 letters, with all four letter forms, tracing rows and three practice words on every sheet.
• Your Name in Arabic Script, With Checked SpellingsType your name and see it in Arabic script. 212 common English names are checked against Arabic Wikipedia; any other name gets a clearly marked estimate.