What is the relationship between translation and intellectual production? It is not obvious, you might think. Translation, by necessity, does not provide new insights but rather makes existing knowledge available in another language. If everyone spoke English it would not really be an issue.

What do the next ten years hold for creativity, innovation and intellectual production in the Middle East? Among the presentations to the Arab Thought Foundation’s ninth annual conference, FIKR9, one narrative for how the region should evolve dominated all others.

This said the region can harness its ‘youth bulge’ to create a knowledge economy. This can happen from within the existing political structures, and will fuse Gulf oil wealth and investment expertise with the ever growing pool of human talent from across the region. But it was not the only narrative by any means.

The BBC appears to be thinking seriously about using translation to connect its global audience online.

On Thursday the World Service hosted a cross-language discussion between English, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Persian, Indonesian and Spanish speakers with Google’s Machine Translation service providing translations.

What ensued was a bizarre disjointed discussion about nothing much in particular, resembling a collection of spam attacks.

Yesterday I presented Meedan’s approach to collaborative translation to students at the Centre for Translation Studies at Leeds University, UK.

There was a great turn out, particularly from Arabic students, and I was absolutely amazed be the quality of the feedback.

We discussed Meedan’s approach and how to get started using the tools, and I tried to demonstrate how getting involved would increase translators’ opportunities by boosting their profile, increasing their technology awareness and honing their translation skills with a live audience.

It’s the daily trade of the television output editor, chopping what doesn’t meet the grade to maintain the daily news agenda in a time sensitive schedule.

But now an Arabic language channel in the Gulf might have to rethink its editorial chain of command after a court in Dubai slapped down a $27,000 fine for not broadcasting an interview it recorded with a Saud royal.

The decision inflicted ‘emotional, moral and social damage on the prince’s status as a royal,’ according to his lawyer.

The Middle East online news site Menassat is facing an uncertain future today after its leading funder threatened to pull out.

Menassat reporters were considering their options on Wednesday as the company’s Dutch backers, Free Voice were reviewing whether it would fund for another month.

According to Menassat staff, Free Voice – a media advocacy group that supports press freedoms and balanced journalism in the Middle East – had long running financial concerns, following irregularities surrounding a former CEO.

Google has admitted it faces major challenges in widening access to the internet in the Arab World.

Limited infrastructure and language problems in the Middle East hinder access to the best of what the web has to offer, the search engine said in launch post of the Google Arabia blog.

With just one percent of all internet content in Arabic, Middle East audiences still have some way to go before they can enjoy the breadth of content other language communities have access to.