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Understanding the English language as a distinct and stable entity has increasingly come into question across disciplines, often calling for more translingual approaches to writing instruction that take into account multiple manifestations of world Englishes (Canagarajah; Horner and Trimbur; Kachru). Since what Paul Matsuda calls the "division of labor" in the mid-twentieth century, SLW has often been seen as a distinct discipline from composition, rhetoric, and professional/technical writing, both pedagogically and epistemologically (Matsuda; Seargeant). Specifically, technical communication has rarely taken into account world Englishes approaches, often relying on standardized notions of "plain English" (Bokor). This presentation will argue that SLW pedagogies developed in what Anne Ruggles Gere calls the "extracurriculum of composition," where writing instruction came into contact with more diverse student populations. Archival research within the Kautz Family YMCA Archives clearly shows how pre-disciplinary forms of both technical communication and second language writing informed each other at the turn of the twentieth century in pre-professional spaces like the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). Constructions of technical writing based on "plain English" emerged out of translingual contexts, where students, industrial workers, and engineers came to the writing situation with diverse linguistic backgrounds, though these backgrounds are often hidden by the native speaker ideal and notions of "plain English." Examining these translingual spaces will demonstrate the constitutive nature of technical communication and SLW, both disciplinarily and historiographically. Recovering earlier translingual contexts can help scholars and instructors reimagine the disciplinary relationship between technical communication and SLW, providing opportunities to bring a world Englishes paradigm into the technical communication classroom and beyond.Read less