Machine Translation and Global English

Abstract

This essay critiques Warren Weaver's articulation of machine translation as a problem of cryptography and his analogizing of the treatment of language within the context of machine translation to C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards's Basic English project. Basic language, with its privileging of communicability and immediate legibility, is the precondition for the global network of programming languages. Focusing on the underlying principles of machine translation, functionality, and performativity, this essay argues for a homology between machine translation and global English: both exist in the technocratic mode and abide by the principle of instrumental rationality.