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I typed my product title in Arabic, chose Latin mode and got an empty slug; why?

Because Latin mode keeps only the letters a-z and the digits 0-9, and a purely Arabic title contains none of them, so nothing survives, and the tool lists the letters it removed. The fix is one of three: go back to Arabic mode, write an English title yourself, or turn on the rough transliteration and edit its output.

Published · 3 min read

What exactly you saw

You typed عسل سدر, Arabic for Sidr honey, and chose 'Latin ASCII'. The result field is empty, with a message beneath saying no letter or digit survives from this title with these options, and a warning line, 'Characters dropped because they are outside ASCII (6)', followed by ع س ل د ر.

Notice the count is 6 but only 5 letters are shown. The count covers every letter removed, while the list shows each distinct letter once, and س appears in both words. The tool hides nothing from you: that is exactly what was lost.

Why the tool does not translate the title

Because translating is not what it does. It does not know that عسل means honey; it applies fixed rules to letters, not meanings. And transliteration, writing an Arabic word in Latin letters, is inexact by nature, because Arabic is written without short vowels: software cannot tell whether سدر reads sidr or sadr. So removal is the default, and transliteration is an option you turn on yourself knowing its limits.

The three fixes, and which suits you

  1. Arabic mode: if your audience reads Arabic, an Arabic slug is perfectly valid, and you get عسل-سدر. The quickest fix.
  2. An English title you write yourself: type Sidr Honey in Latin mode and get sidr-honey. The clearest fix for an English slug, because you choose the words.
  3. The rough transliteration: under 'Arabic letters in Latin mode' choose transliteration, and عسل سدر becomes asl-sdr. A warning says it is rough and unvowelled, and it is right: nobody will read asl-sdr the way you intend. Edit it by hand in the result field before publishing.

A mixed title? Mind the warning

If the title combines Arabic and English words, such as Sidr Honey عسل سدر, the slug will not be empty: sidr-honey remains and the two Arabic words are removed. That is the riskier case, because the result looks fine and you may not notice part of the title went missing. In Latin mode, always read the dropped-characters line, even when the slug looks good.

In batch mode, when you convert a list of titles, the count of 'empty slugs' appears under the result. Anything other than zero means one or more lines were entirely Arabic and came out empty.

The steps

  1. Open the URL slug generator and paste the title.
  2. Decide first: an Arabic slug or an English one?
  3. For Arabic, choose 'Arabic Unicode'. For English, write the title in English and choose 'Latin ASCII'.

Common questions

Do digits survive in Latin mode with an Arabic title?

Yes. قهوة عربية أصيلة 500 غرام gives just 500, because Arabic-Indic and Western digits both become 0 to 9 and stay.

Does the transliteration follow a known standard?

No. It is a rough consonant table that writes both ص and س as s, drops the hamza, and can turn two different words into the same result.

Can I copy an empty slug by mistake?

The field is empty and the message is showing, so there is nothing to copy. In batch mode, though, check the empty-slug count before pasting the column.