Critical moments occur when a language comes to be written as well as spoken, and then when it comes to function as a standard language for some sort of nation‐state. In the sociohistorical perspective English is acquiring a new identity as the global language of the late capitalist world. There is no intrinsic value in the various expression features that characterize the standard variety of a language. The systemic processes are going on in the language itself as it moves into the new sociopolitical contexts. Since human societies are organized hierarchically, the innovations in meaning potential that are part of these historical processes begin by being the prerogative of a favored few. Translation is also, as often pointed out, a process of metaphor: not a prototype, since it is a second‐order semiotic activity, but perhaps the limiting case.