Arabic text in matplotlib

Question

xlabel and ylabel don't display Arabic

x = [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
y = [6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

plt.bar(x, y, label='Bar1', color='red')
plt.xlabel("الفواصل")
plt.ylabel("الترتيبات")
plt.show()

You won't see Arabic if the font doesn't have the Arabic glyphs. But what happens if you encode the Unicode text to UTF-8 bytes? Eg `"الفواصل".encode()` — PM 2Ring, Nov 01 '17 at 14:51
Which Python version do you use? Upgrade to Python 3 if you are still using Python 2.7. Unicode / UTF-8 handling is somewhat broken in Python 2.7. — Kijewski, Nov 01 '17 at 14:52
I use Python3, "الفواصل".encode("ascii", "ignore") dosen't work — Ahmed007, Nov 01 '17 at 15:03
@ImportanceOfBeingErnest, well ... see you own answer to confirm that it does. :P — Kijewski, Nov 01 '17 at 15:38
@ImportanceOfBeingErnest All Unicode-related questions should mention the Python version (preferably via an appropriate tag) because Unicode handling is so different in Python 2 vs Python 3. — PM 2Ring, Nov 01 '17 at 15:51
@kay what I mean is that a solution to a unicode problem cannot be to use a different python version. — ImportanceOfBeingErnest, Nov 01 '17 at 15:55
@ImportanceOfBeingErnest, sure it can?! Many libraries don't play nice neither with UTF-8 strs nor with unicode. Many of these libraries work well in Python 3, though. — Kijewski, Nov 01 '17 at 16:37

score 10 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 12 '21 at 20:30

10

You will first need to install both arabic-reshaper and python-bidi.

import arabic_reshaper
from bidi.algorithm import get_display
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
y = [6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
xlbl = get_display( arabic_reshaper.reshape('الفواصل'.decode('utf8')))
ylbl = get_display( arabic_reshaper.reshape('الترتيبات'.decode('utf8')))
plt.bar(x, y, label='Bar1', color='red')
plt.xlabel(xlbl, fontdict=None, labelpad=None)
plt.ylabel(ylbl, fontdict=None, labelpad=None)
plt.show()

plot Arabic

edited Feb 12 '21 at 20:30

Ali Hassaine

579
5
19

answered Nov 16 '18 at 18:30

ALSHARGI NEWYORK

147
1
5

But the numbers are not Arabic – user9812604 Jul 20 '22 at 04:18

ImportanceOfBeingErnest · Answer 2 · 2017-12-05T09:50:09.637

-5

It should work if you use unicode strings (u"الفواصل") instead of usual strings.

x = [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
y = [6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

plt.bar(x, y, label='Bar1', color='red')
plt.xlabel(u"الفواصل")
plt.ylabel(u"الترتيبات")
plt.show()

Or, in order to get the correct order

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
y = [6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

plt.bar(x, y, label='Bar1', color='red')
plt.xlabel(u"الفواصل"[::-1])
plt.ylabel(u"الترتيبات"[::-1])
plt.show()

edited Dec 05 '17 at 09:50

answered Nov 01 '17 at 15:14

ImportanceOfBeingErnest

321,279
53
665
712

1

I still have the same problem – Ahmed007 Nov 01 '17 at 15:19
1

In that case, you might need to update matplotlib. It might be that your version is too old and uses a font that does not have all unicode symbols available. – ImportanceOfBeingErnest Nov 01 '17 at 15:21
Yes, it should work, if the font actually has those Arabic glyphs. And the `u` prefix is only required in Python 2, in Python 3 all normal text strings are Unicode objects, so the `u` prefix isn't required (although recent Python 3 versions permit it for reasons of Python 2 compatibility). – PM 2Ring Nov 01 '17 at 15:50
BTW, there's still a big problem with this: the letters are in the wrong order (left-to-right) and disjoint. – halflings Dec 05 '17 at 05:34
I don't know how to connect the letters. But you may reverse the string for correct ordering. – ImportanceOfBeingErnest Dec 05 '17 at 09:50

Arabic text in matplotlib

2 Answers2