How to Write Arabic and English Business Emails with AI
Why UAE email is a special case
In a single day you might write to a government entity in formal Arabic, a client in English and a colleague on WhatsApp in something in between. Most guides treat that as one skill. It is three.
AI is strong at formal Modern Standard Arabic. Dialect output is patchier and less consistent, and it needs a careful read before it goes out. So the first decision is not which tool to use. It is which register you need.
| Situation | Ask the AI for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Government entity, regulator, formal letter | Formal Modern Standard Arabic | Titles, and the fixed openers and closers |
| Client or partner email | Polite business Arabic, or English | Names, dates and numbers |
| Internal team message | Plain professional Arabic or English | Keep it short |
| WhatsApp to someone you know well | Light Gulf tone, only if you can read it yourself | Dialect output varies, so review it before sending |
The five-part prompt
Most weak Arabic drafts come from a weak brief. Give the AI five things.
Here is a prompt that uses all five.
Reader: a procurement manager at a UAE company I have met once.
Goal: send the updated quotation and ask for feedback by Thursday.
Language: formal Modern Standard Arabic, polite and short.
Format: subject line, greeting, three sentences, closing.
Afterwards: list any words or phrases you are unsure about.
What comes back
تحية طيبة وبعد،
نشكركم على وقتكم واجتماعنا الأخير. نرفق لكم عرض السعر المحدث، ويسعدنا الاطلاع على ملاحظاتكم قبل نهاية يوم الخميس.
ولكم جزيل الشكر والتقدير،
[الاسم]
Greetings,
Thank you for your time and our recent meeting. Please find the updated quotation attached. We would be glad to hear your comments before the end of Thursday.
With sincere thanks and appreciation,
[Name]
Sample for illustration. Have a native Arabic speaker review anything you actually send.
The second pass most people skip
Ask the AI to review its own Arabic for grammar, tone and anything that sounds translated. Then ask it to translate the email back into English. Read the English. If the meaning has drifted, you have found the problem in ten seconds, without needing to be fluent in Arabic.
I like this trick because it works for the English speaker in a bilingual team as much as for the Arabic speaker checking English.
Six checks before you press send
That last check matters more than the others. If your company has no rule on it yet, start with our guide to an AI usage policy for UAE teams.
One good prompt helps one person. A shared method helps a team.
Where AI still gets it wrong
- It mixes formal and casual phrases in one email.
- It translates English idioms word for word, and the Arabic reads as foreign.
- It gets flowery when you wanted short.
- It drifts between dialect and formal Arabic in a long draft.
Which tool should you use?
ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot all handle Arabic. Test yours with an email you have already sent and see which draft you would actually send. The UAE also builds its own open Arabic models, such as Jais from G42 and MBZUAI, and Falcon from TII in Abu Dhabi. They are aimed mostly at developers and organisations building their own tools, so for everyday email the assistant you already have is the practical place to start.
Questions people ask
Get your whole team writing well in both languages
About the author
Hitesh Motwani is a Generative AI trainer and the founder of Skillopedia FZC LLC, a registered UAE company, running hands-on workshops for teams in the UAE and India. He founded Skillopedia, is visiting faculty at K J Somaiya Institute of Management, and wrote Generative AI 360° (ZebraLearn, 2025).
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