Busy in one language, buying in another
The Arabic figure is real demand and it belongs to shoppers: a flavour, a gift, a price at the piece. Nothing in it is written the way a purchasing office writes, and above the same threshold the wholesale, distributor and importer phrasing in Arabic returns nothing.
French carries the other half: 600 of its 14,520 monthly searches across 187 phrases are trade wording — small beside the consumer total, and the only measured evidence that anyone here is sourcing rather than shopping. The English 590 reads differently: someone studying the country from outside rather than filling a shelf inside it.
How 1,030 became 600
The French trade figure first came back as 1,030 a month. We did not keep it. Read it closely and one request appears three times with the words in a different order — noun first, then adjective, then a preposition swapped. Three rows, one question.
Merging the variants and keeping only phrases above the threshold leaves 600, a gap of roughly 1.7 times. What we decline to count is part of the decision: a figure inflated while it is measured is inflated again when it becomes an order quantity, and somebody holds pallets the shelf never asked for.
Where each language sends the buyer
Arabic queries fill with Gulf online retail priced at the piece, and barely a local supplier page is in sight. French queries return wholesalers in France and Spain — European stock, a European margin and a second set of documents before anything reaches Tunis.
English queries return trade-statistics pages rather than suppliers: useful for reading a table, useless for filling a carton. Whichever language is typed, the shelf is quoted from somewhere else, and a container loaded beside the producers takes one rung out of that ladder.
The offer is French, the pack is Arabic
Two languages, two jobs. Correspondence, the price list and the offer are prepared in French or English — that is where the buying vocabulary sits.
The pack runs the other way. The mandatory panel speaks Arabic, with French alongside as the importer’s file requires: name of the food, ingredients and allergens, net weight, storage, date marking and the company placing the goods. We draft that content from our technical data sheet and check it against your artwork beforeanything is printed. Reversed — an offer in Arabic, a panel in French — both halves slow down.
Two names that do not translate loosely
Some words must be right in either language. A coating made with vegetable fat is a compound or a glaze and is never called chocolate; the offer states line by line which it is. The jar line is a spread — sweetened and spoonable, for retail and for filling — not a pastry paste.
Items outside the core range — couverture, bulk chocolate by the kilo, raw nuts, dried fruit, cocoa — are sourced on request; we confirm composition and format before quoting.
Route, terms and what to send
Loading runs from Gaziantep, about three hours by road from Mersin; we quote FCA Gaziantep, FOB Mersin, CIF or DAP. The origin document and the rules that apply are named in the offer per tariff line, as they stand on the day it is issued; the importer files the entry.
The sales unit is a full container or a full truck, but the minimum sits per line, written into the offer — the point of a mixed container on a first order. Send the lines you want quoted, the pack format for each, the port of arrival, and whether the label carries your own brand; the answer comes back in writing, line by line (how we work).
Should we write to you in French or in Arabic?
French or English. That is where the trade phrasing measures — 600 a month in French, 590 in English, and nothing above the threshold in Arabic — and it is the language the offer, the price list and the technical data sheets are prepared in. Arabic is where the pack has to speak, not the purchase order.
Why quote 600 a month when the raw list showed 1,030?
Because the same request is recorded three times with the words in a different order. Adding the rows together inflates the market by about 1.7 times. We merge the variants, keep the phrases above the threshold, and publish the number we can defend rather than the larger one.
Who prepares the Arabic label content?
We draft it from our technical data sheet — name of the food, ingredients and allergens, netweight, storage, date marking and the company placing the goods — with French alongside as the importer’s file requires, then check it against your artwork. Nothing goes to print without written approval.
