Up until recently, Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi worked for the Washington Post. What happened to him? I couldn't say it better than Wikipedia: [1]
(begin quote)
On 2 October 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents related to his marriage; he never left the building and was subsequently declared a missing person. Anonymous Turkish police sources have alleged that he was murdered and dismembered inside the consulate.
(end quote)
The Washington Post has now published Khashoggi's last column, titled appropriately, "What the Arab world needs most is free expression". [2] In it, he writes of the need for translation efforts and platforms for free expression:
(begin quote)
Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington, then he or she would be able to better understand the implications of similar projects in his or her community.
The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.
(end quote)
I'm wondering what folks in the Wikimedia community and movement make of this call to action. Is there more that Wikimedia can do, for example, to support translation of news articles into many languages?
There is nothing in Jamal's own op-ed that indicates that it would be legally permissible to translate it. This is, unfortunately, the norm for news; there are few outlets that use a Creative Commons license, and those that do, typically tend to choose the most restrictive variants.
Perhaps there would be value in an organized community effort that would pick up news articles [3] that _are_ licensed under free licenses, and translate them into as many languages as possible. If launched under a prominent umbrella -- e.g., Wikimedia --, this might then also help incentivize more outlets to selectively license content openly, permitting translation. Beyond its intrinsic value, such an effort would also help the Wikimedia projects by expanding the reach of impacted citations into more languages.
Thoughts? Does Jamal's call to action resonate in other ways with Wikimedia's mission?
Sincerely,
Erik
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi -- written by multiple authors and distributed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike-License 3.0 Unported
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/jamal-khashoggi-what... -- quoted as fair use
[3] Likely restricted to some subset of outlets, e.g., sources most Wikipedia editions would accept as citations