What is the future of English as a lingua franca? [closed]

Translation has gotten vastly better than it used to, but it will never replace human language comprehension because of the same reason that human translators can't replace human language comprehension - people rarely express themselves in a clear, unambiguous way, except for trivial concepts.

The problem is more fundamental than learning to express oneself more precisely - people often possess their thought precisely, and only through the interchange of context and conversation is it made clear. Computer translation will help, but as long as there is human communication, there will be a language barrier. A dialect barrier, even. So there will be a lingua franca.

Will it be English? The lingua franca is a function of economic power...non-linguists learn a foreign language because it is generally in their economic interest somehow. If English-speaking countries continue to predominate economically, then English will be the lingua franca. The show Firefly proposed that in the future, the lingua franca would be English sprinkled with Chinese phrases...not quite a pidgin, but definitely with a strong Chinese influence.

A useful predictor might be the total non-distinct number of pages published in a given language. If those patterns change, that might predict the rise of another lingua franca.