Training a language model on Arabic data - handling right-to-left text direction

I am currently working on training a language model on Arabic data and I have encountered an issue with handling the right-to-left text direction. Specifically, I am unsure whether I should reverse the text in my training data to accommodate for the right-to-left direction, or if this would affect the quality of the resulting language model.

As Arabic is a right-to-left language, the order of the words in a sentence is reversed compared to left-to-right languages like English. Therefore, I am concerned that reversing the text could change the meaning of the sentences and produce incorrect results. On the other hand, if I do not reverse the text, the language model may not be able to learn the correct relationships between the words and may not perform well on real-world data.

I would appreciate any advice or insights on how to handle right-to-left text direction when training a language model on Arabic data. Specifically, I would like to know:

  • Should I reverse the text in my training data or not?
  • If I do not reverse the text, how can I ensure that the language model is able to understand the correct relationships between words and produce accurate results?
  • Are there any other considerations or best practices I should be aware of when training a language model on Arabic data with right-to-left text direction?