Languages of the UAE

Arabic and English

Arabic is the official language of the UAE. All road and traffic signs, and signs on commercial outlets, are in Arabic and English. The UAE government portal lists Chinese, English, French, Hindi and Russian as the other languages used in the courts, and names Bengali, Farsi, Malayalam, Turkish and Urdu among the other widely spoken languages.¹

Government services are published mainly in Arabic and English: the official government portal is written in those two languages.²

Contracts and the workplace

Under the federal labour law, Arabic is the approved language for all records, files and forms. Employers must use Arabic for contracts and for the instructions and circulars they issue, with a second language that a non-Arabic-speaking worker understands. If the two texts differ, the Arabic text prevails.³

Have the Arabic version of any contract you sign checked, because it is the one that counts in a dispute.

Courts, notaries and legal translation

Documents presented to UAE courts must be in Arabic, or translated into Arabic by a legal translator approved by the Ministry of Justice.⁶

Instruments made by a notary public are written in Arabic. Documents in a foreign language are translated by a certified legal translator, and the instrument and its translation are then ratified.⁸

The Ministry of Justice registers legal translators, who need a recognised translation qualification and, for expatriates, five years of experience. The profession is regulated by Federal Decree-Law No. 22 of 2022.^4,7

Schools

Government schools teach all subjects in Arabic, with English taught as a second language and used for some technical and scientific subjects. Private schools follow their own curricula but must also offer Islamic education, social studies and Arabic, with separate Arabic classes for non-Arabic speakers.⁵