Arabic or English? Choosing the Language of Your Review Reply

An English review lands on your Riyadh business profile. Then one in formal Arabic. Then one in colloquial Gulf dialect. Then a fourth in Arabic written with Latin letters: "el makan 7elw bs el service ba6i2".

Which language do you reply in? It sounds like a detail, but it decides two things: whether the customer feels addressed personally, and whether the next reader understands what you wrote.

Key takeaways:

• The core rule: reply in the language of the review, not your preferred one.
• Arabizi (Arabic in Latin letters) gets an Arabic reply, not an Arabizi one.
• Dialect is met with light dialect, not polished formal Arabic, which reads cold.
• Dual-language replies are worth it in a narrow set of cases only.
• Never machine-translate unreviewed — literal translation ruins apologies specifically.

The rule: mirror, don't choose

The language a customer wrote in is the language they want to be answered in. That is not taste but respect: they made an effort in a language they chose, and replying in another says implicitly that the choice went unnoticed.

The second reason is practical: a reply is read far more by others than by its recipient. A visitor scanning your profile two months later sees the review and the reply together. When the languages match they read a conversation; when they differ they see two unrelated blocks and scroll past.

In BrightLocal's 2026 survey, 80% said they'd likely use a business that replies to all its reviews, against 47% for one replying only to negatives (BrightLocal LCRS 2026). The value is in the reply being read — and it isn't read if it isn't understood.

The four cases

A review in formal Arabic

Reply in simple formal Arabic. Don't over-elaborate: ceremonial phrasing reads like a government letter, not a business. Write the way you'd speak in a polite setting.

A review in dialect

This is where most go wrong. A customer writes "the place is nice but the wait was long" in their own dialect, and gets back polished formal Arabic — so the reply sounds like it came from a ministry rather than a café.

The better register: light dialect. Close to how they wrote, without overdoing the imitation:

Thank you, and we're glad you came. The wait is a fair point and we're genuinely working on it. Hope to see you again.

Understandable to any Arabic reader, and at the same time not a canned block of text.

⚠️ Never imitate a dialect you don't command. A forced dialect is worse than neutral formal Arabic — it reads as mockery.

A review in English

Reply in English. Even if your business is entirely local, the writer chose English for a reason: a resident, a visitor, or simply their habit. And the next reader searching in English will find text they understand.

A review in Arabizi

"el makan 7elw" — Arabic in Latin characters. Reply in Arabic, not in Arabizi.

Why: Arabizi is a fast, personal writing style and doesn't suit a business voice. And the customer certainly reads Arabic — they are writing it already, just in different letters.

When to reply in two languages

Rarely. A dual reply doubles the length and weighs the card down, and most readers skip it.

It earns its space in two cases only:

• Information that concerns everyone: a change of location, adjusted hours, a policy clarification. Here the reply isn't only for the reviewer.
• A genuinely split audience — a hotel or clinic in a tourist area, where half the readers have no Arabic.

If you do, order it: the review's language first, then the other after a short break.

Machine translation: where it breaks

Pasting a reply through a translator works for simple thanks and collapses on apologies.

The problem is that an apology is a cultural expression, not a linguistic one. "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience" translated literally into Arabic comes out understandable but cold and bureaucratic. Arabic apologises closer to "we understand your frustration and we're sorry about the experience."

The reverse is worse: an Arabic apology machine-translated into English comes out ornate in a way that reads as insincere.

The rule: use translation as a starting point, then rewrite it as you would actually say it. Arabic-first templates are in 25 ready-to-use reply templates.

FAQ

Does reply language affect my Google Maps ranking?

Google doesn't publish its ranking formula and this can't be asserted. The certain gain is that an understood reply persuades the reader — and the reader is who decides to call you.

A customer wrote in a language I don't know at all?

Reply in English, two polite sentences, with an invitation to continue privately. Attempting a language you don't command through a translator risks an embarrassing error.

Should I vary dialect by branch?

If your branches are in different countries, yes — light dialect close to each branch's audience. But hold one brand tone: vary the vocabulary, not the personality.

What language for silent reviews (stars, no text)?

Your primary business language. There's no text to guide you, so pick the likeliest. Detail in a one-star review with no comment.

The bottom line

The rule fits in a line: write in the review's language, at its level of formality. Formal gets simple formal, dialect gets light dialect, English gets English, Arabizi gets Arabic.

What makes it hard isn't knowing the rule but applying it across twenty reviews a week in mixed languages and registers, without sliding into one cold template.

Raddly drafts the reply in the review's own language and dialect — Gulf for Gulf, Egyptian for Egyptian, English for English — in the brand voice you define, leaving you to review and approve.