Here’s a review Sorosoro wouldn’t have missed: « The Last Lingua Franca », by Nicholas Ostler. According to the British linguist, head of Foundation for Endangered Languages, English as a global lingua franca is bound to end up disappearing, because of the improvements of automatic translation. Slightly provocative as it may, this is the central theory of The Last Lingua Franca – English Until the Return of Babel, recently published in the UK.

Nicholas Ostler bets on the « advances in computer translation » and predicts that soon « everyone will speak and write in whatever language they choose, and the world will understand ».

Along with the withering of Anglo-American hegemony, Oslter says, English will eventually lose its influence, and will not be taken over by another global language. According to the scholar, what could follow is a « return to a state of Babel ».

Deborah Cameron’s review objects the theory’s « unrealistic techno-optimism ». And one might add that the on-going improvements in automatic translation bring the hope of soon having whole articles and books translated without the need for actual translators, although what Nick Ostler does not say, is that these improvements essentially apply to automatic translation… into English! Which could stem the reverse effect of that predicted in The Last Lingua Franca.

This being said, Ostler’s work does come as a reminder that linguistic landscapes change and evolve according to political, economic and most probably technological realities. The triumph of a language is never forever.

It is also worth reminding that on the long run, the supremacy of English is only relative. Numerous languages have enjoyed a similar prestige since antiquity up to the 20th century: Arabic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Pali, Persian, French, Spanish… And out of the billion English speakers around the world, only a third have English as a mother tongue. Reasons to think English will not be an exception to the rule: following the ascent and the domination could come decline. The question is… when?

Deborah Cameron’s review in The Guardian