Somali to Arabic translator (Google Translate Somali to Arabic alternative)

Google Translate Somali to Arabic is the usual search; this page does the same job and shows more under the result. Type Somali in the box below, choose the Arabic you need, and get Arabic script with full harakat, a Standard Arabic line, a Latin transliteration and a Listen button. Free, no account, nothing stored.

What you get on this page

• Somali to Arabic in Standard Arabic or in Gulf, Saudi, Egyptian, Levantine, Iraqi or Moroccan Arabic.
• Harakat on every word, so you can read the result even if you only learned Arabic letters at dugsi.
• Transliteration in Latin letters, which Somali readers find natural since Somali itself is written in Latin script.
• Up to 1,000 characters per request; the swap arrow gives you Arabic to Somali.

Google Translate Somali to Arabic versus this page

Google Translate covers the Somali-Arabic pair, and for a plain sentence it is fine. What it returns is Standard Arabic only, with no vowel marks, no pronunciation and no way to ask for the Arabic spoken in Jeddah, Dubai or Cairo, where many Somali families have relatives. The tool on this page is also machine translation, by an AI model, and it can be wrong too. The difference is what you can see. The dialect version, the Standard Arabic version and the vowels sit side by side, so you can judge the result rather than trust it.

Why Somali to Arabic is tricky

• Same sounds, different letters. Somali writes the Arabic sounds with Latin letters: c is ع (Cali is عَلِي), x is ح (xamdi is حَمْد), q and kh are the same as in Arabic, dh is a Somali retroflex that Arabic does not have. Somali has been written this way only since 1972.
• Shared words in Somali dress. Kitaab, su'aal, jawaab, waqti, saacad, daqiiqad, sabab, diin, caqli, kursi and the weekday names Axad, Isniin, Talaado, Arbaco, Khamiis, Jimco and Sabti are all Arabic; the tool has to map them back to كِتَاب, سُؤَال, جَوَاب rather than transliterate them.
• Word order and focus. Somali puts the verb last and marks what matters with waa, baa or ayaa; Arabic puts the verb first and has no focus particles, so sentence structure is rebuilt, not mirrored.
• Gender. Somali nouns are masculine or feminine (-ka, -ta), and Arabic verbs and adjectives agree with the person spoken to, so Iska warran? to a woman becomes كَيْفَ حَالُكِ (kayfa 7aaluki) with a different ending.

Example sentences

Tips for better results

Write Somali with its standard spelling (double vowels for long sounds, c and x for the Arabic letters); the model reads it more reliably than ad hoc spellings. Keep each request to a sentence or two and say whether the reader is a man or a woman. For family in the Gulf pick Gulf or Saudi, for Egypt pick Egyptian, for anything formal or religious keep Standard Arabic. Names such as Cabdi and Xasan are mapped to their Arabic forms عَبْدِي and حَسَن; the name in Arabic page lets you check a name on its own. The other direction is Arabic to Somali. To read Arabic you already have, use Arabic transliteration, and the English to Arabic page covers the dialect menu in detail.

Frequently asked questions