Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian darija: why a video “in Arabic” isn't enough

A brand wants to speak to the Maghreb. It has its ad translated “into Arabic”. It runs it in Algiers, Casablanca and Tunis. And nothing happens — or worse, people make fun of it. The translation isn't the problem. The problem is that there is no single “Arabic” that people speak at home: there is Standard Arabic, the language of TV news and official documents, which nobody uses to talk to their mother; and there are the darijas — Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian — which are what people actually speak, hear and share.

One word, three countries

The simplest way is to listen. “Now” is درك (derk) in Algiers, دابا (daba) in Casablanca, توّة (tawwa) in Tunis. “A lot”: بزّاف (bezzaf) in Algiers as in Casablanca, but برشا (barcha) in Tunis. “How much”: شحال (chhal) in Algeria and Morocco, قدّاش (qaddech) in Tunisia. “Good”: مليح (mlih), مزيان (mezyan), باهي (bahi). An Algerian who hears دابا knows within one syllable that the speaker is Moroccan. It isn't a judgement, it's an ear: the same one a speaker from France has on hearing “septante” (Belgian and Swiss French for “seventy”).

Grammar gives people away too. Moroccan forms the present tense with the prefix كا/كتـ (كيدير, kaydir: “he does”); Algerian does not. Tunisian has words of its own — فمّا (famma, “there is”), شنوّة (chnouwa, “what”) — that neither of the others uses. And Kabyle is not a darija at all: it is an Amazigh language, with its own grammar, spoken by millions of people in Algeria and the diaspora, for whom a video “in Arabic” is not in their language.

Why it matters for a brand video

A UGC video — a creator showing a product at home, on their phone — works because people believe the person. They speak like the audience, in their living room, in their own words. The moment they use a word from another country, the belief collapses: it's no longer “someone like me”, it's an ad. And ads get skipped. Mixing darija and French, on the other hand, is no problem at all: that's how people talk, in Algiers as in Marseille. What is a problem is mixing two darijas, or a smoothed-out “average Arabic” that comes from nowhere.

What we do at ASLI

• A brief asks for one dialect per video — Algerian darija, Moroccan darija, Tunisian derja, Kabyle, Standard Arabic or French — never “Arabic”.
• The brief only goes to creators who speak that dialect: a creator from Tizi Ouzou does not receive a Moroccan brief.
• The review before delivery is done by someone who speaks the video's darija, not by a translator.
• Subtitles come in two tracks: the language spoken on screen, and French for the brand that doesn't understand it.

An audience that hears its own language listens. An audience that hears the neighbour's scrolls on. That's the whole difference between translating and speaking.