If it helps any, a director is usually a member of a board; a manager is not. This means a director helps take strategic decisions, while a manager can at most take operational and tactical level decisions (the board -- with its director members -- having made the strategic ones for him).

Even this is a matter of semantics, though: there are directors who do not sit on boards and are thus no more than grandly titled senior managers; there are de facto directors who own their own sole-trader companies and may just as truthfully be titled "cleaner"; there are managers who actually sit on boards, though usually only as observers.

The level of decision making competence is the decisive factor: in descending importance, strategic, operational, strategic. In loose military rank equivalence, you have generals, majors, and captains.

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Note added at 35 mins (2008-07-22 08:39:38 GMT)
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Sorry, my error: the levels of decision making importance should read "strategic, operational, tactical."

مدير = director
مدبر = manager

Greetings... taHaiya Tayyiba wa b3ad...

In that context, here are three close-equivalent terms:

Mudir 3am مدير عام (implicit in the senior role mentioned)

mudir al-mashroo3 مدير المشروع

mudir al-manthooma مدير المنظومة

Hope this helps.

Khair, in shaa' Allah.

Regards,

Stephen H. Franke
San Pedro, California

Director is equivalent to the Chief Managing Officer or General Manager مدير عام أو المدير المسئول الأعلىwhereas the Managing Director is equivalent to العضو المنتدب

Manager is مدير

director=الشخص الذي يقوم بتحديد الأهداف ووضع السياسات العامة وهو عضو في مجلس الإدارة
manager=الشخص الذي يعمل على تنفيذ السياسة الموضوعة مثل رؤساء اللأقسام الذين يعملون على تنفيذ ما رسمته الإدارة العليا من خطط وما أقرته من سياسات