RM Lingo
Right-to-left by default, not as an afterthought
RM Lingo has provided conference interpreting, translation, editing, media accessibility and localization since 2003. A subsidiary of Diplomatic International, it works in Arabic and English at the core, plus French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Mandarin and a range of less-served languages — for the UN system, development banks and humanitarian organisations.
01 — The challenge
When your buyers are diplomats, the website is part of the credential check.
Institutional language work is bought on trust. A procurement officer at a development bank or a humanitarian agency is checking whether a supplier can be trusted with a live ministerial session, sensitive documents and confidentiality obligations. A generic translation-agency template — stock globes, per-word pricing, a quote calculator — signals exactly the wrong tier.
The harder constraint was linguistic. The primary audience reads Arabic. That makes right-to-left the default layout, not a plugin bolted onto an English site: the typography, the numbering, the card order and the navigation all have to be designed in that direction and still hold up when mirrored into English.
A language company that gets its own bilingual layout wrong has already failed the interview.
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2003
Year the company was founded, per its own site
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7
Service lines with their own section
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RTL
Arabic right-to-left as the site's primary direction
02 — Our approach
Design it in Arabic first, then let English follow.
We built the site right-to-left from the ground up, with Arabic typography treated as the design system rather than a translation layer — gold numerals on deep green, editorial spacing, and a geometric motif that reads as diplomatic rather than corporate. English mirrors the same structure for the international side of the client base.
The seven service lines each get their own explained section — conference interpreting including sign language, document translation, editing and proofreading, media accessibility, localization and transition support, consulting and training, and technical equipment and booths — because these are bought individually, often by different departments of the same organisation.
Credibility is carried by named institutions rather than adjectives: attributed client statements from the Norwegian Red Cross, UNDP, the World Bank Group and Tetra Tech, with the year attached, plus an Insights section that lets the company demonstrate expertise on questions procurement teams actually ask. The contact route is a conversation, not a per-word quote form.
Working with Web Tonic has been a fantastic experience from start to finish. Their team took the time to understand our business goals and delivered exactly what they promised. Communication was excellent, and we've already seen a noticeable improvement in our online visibility. Highly recommended!
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