I know the post is dead , but this may help someone searching for Tips about making arabic reports https://ahmedgalalpost.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/using-arabic-in-jasper-reports-tips-and-tricks/ arabic strings can be written in RTL style with no problems , but you can't set the data filling direction to be RTL. For example , if you want to display the data horizontaly in multiple columns , the data will be populated in left columns then in right columns.That can be unacceptable in some cases.