And I really don't buy the Free Machines being behind it. They're at the top of the status quo at the beginning of the story. The other parties are literally arguing about bankrupting their planets to pay the machines for a low-effort task. They have everything to gain by doing nothing, and everything to lose by taking any action. All they have to do is wait. Let's say that the Free Machines are behind this failed attempt. Even if they are, they have now given BOTH sides of the conflict the idea that an infectable translation program MIGHT be possible, and both sides will suddenly become very interested in new R&D to further investigate this possibility, and maybe that R&D succeeds. We are dealing with scientifically advanced technologically advanced society's with reasonable planetary wealth apparently under one government. So it is in their best interests to spend a little time doing research to find a solution at some non-bankrupting cost, rather than rushing into selling out their planet. I'm assuming the Free Machines are logical, and I don't this would be a choice they would make.
To me that would be kind of like an alien race coming to Earth in 1960, with the intent of keeping humans out of space. So they leave one of their spaceships for us to find, but jokes on us, it's a faulty spaceship that lacks the power to make it into orbit. So someone finds it, and launches it, and crashes to their doom. The poor astronauts are dead, what a shame. But now that people have seen this happening, they now have seen technology firsthand that can KINDOF do what they need it to do, so it's a matter of refining it, they can reverse engineer any information they've recorded about the craft, and all in all they have much more potential to advance through this experience than to be set back.