## Introduction

English is gradually becoming a world language, a common language for international communication; a development fuelled in recent years among others by advances in information technology and by globalisation which has been gaining pace in business and science in particular. English has now firmly established itself as the lingua franca of international communication, eg in medicine where globalisation has struck hard  and  where  the  pace  and  proliferation  of  ongoing  research  is particularly prominent. Scholars' and practitioners' interest in English for medical purposes has, of course, followed suit. Thus, medical translation  is  becoming  big  business  and  global  and  national  translation businesses alike as well as global translator organisations (eg the American Translators  Association)  are  currently  establishing  specialist 'medical'  translation  units  and  offering  post-graduate  courses  on English  for  medical  purposes  and  English  medical  translation.  Language scholars in business schools and universities are responding to the need for scholarly input. Hence, in 1999 the 12th European Symposium on Language for Special Purposes featured a well-visited workshop  on  English  for  Medical  Purposes,  organised  by  Ines  BuschLauers, some the contributions of which appear as articles in this thematic volume of Hermes. At the Aarhus School of Business we now put an  extra  effort  into  meeting  the  demand  for  scholarly  input  in  this growth area, among others by issuing bilingual medical dictionaries, investigating  presentation  modes  in  package  inserts,  organising  conferences, seminars and PhD courses in medical writing, and breaking new ground by running internet-based distance learning courses in English for medical science.

The present volume of Hermes is yet another attempt to shed light on the issue of medical English. Featuring four original contributions, the volume addresses a range of issues from the rhetoric of science and sociology of academia by Salager-Meyer to critical language and register awareness by Høy and Askehave/Zethsen to translation methodology by Plested.

The  rhetoric  of  science  has  so  far  been  explored  mainly  at  the syntactical  level,  where  focus  has  traditionally  been  on  hedging  and other kinds of mitigation behaviour. In her original contribution entitled Rhetorical  evolution  of  oppositional  discourse  in  French  academic writing, Ms Salager-Meyer adopts a diachronic text perspective while analysing  direct  or  indirect  conflict  in  academic  confrontational  discourse in the Results and Discussion sections of French medical journals  from  1810  to  1995.  Salager-Meyer  observes  that  while  Frenchspeaking  scientists  predominantly  voice  their  professional  disagreement in an authoritative, categorical, direct and personal way, the late 20th century has seen a slight change in the tone of voice of academic conflict which has now become more 'low key', the main vehicles of mitigation being hedging or shifts from person to object thematization.

Medical language is characterised by the highly technical nature of its vocabulary, its abundance of professional jargon and in texts written by physician-writers a conscious rhetorical focus on the subject to the apparent exclusion of persona and audience.  The translation of such texts from one language into another and from one genre into another (called  'inter-generic  translation')  represents  an  intriguing  challenge for text writers and translators; a challenge addressed by Askehave & Zethsen in their paper entitled Medical texts made simple - dream or reality. Askehave  &  Zethsen  analyse  functional  aspects  of  language usage in patient package inserts translated from English into Danish, and  they  argue  that  for  patient  package  inserts  to  become  legible  to layman,  specialist  register  features,  be  they  lexical,  syntactical  or stylistic, must, and indeed can, be abandoned.

In  her  article Morphological considerations concerning the nationalisation of medical terms , Ms Høy pursues the same issue of register awareness, though from a somewhat different angle. The simultaneous decline  in  knowledge  of  the  classical  medical  languages,  Latin  and Greek,  and  the  hegemony  of  English  as  today's lingua  franca of medicine, calls, according to Ms Høy, for an overall Danish language policy to aid producers of medical texts written in Danish, in particular by  setting  up  general  guidelines  for  construction  and  spelling  of compounds. Ms Høy substantiates her point by analysing the so-called neo-classical compounds and by competently illustrating the challenge facing the morphologists trying to bring order to the current confusion within this field.

Translation  orthodoxy  argues  that  translation  into  a  given  target language is the prerogative of a native speaker of that language. This orthodoxy is  challenged  by  Ms  Plested  in  her  article  entitled Translating medical texts into a foreign language: Some methodological considerations. Ms Plested argues that careful monitoration of the translation process using an adirectional translation model and full use of linguistic,  methodological  and  subject  field  competences  specific  to contextualised  medical  communication  will  do  the  trick  and  will, indeed, make it possible for non-native translators to translate medical texts  into  English;  texts  that  are  perfectly  acceptable  to  the  medical community and publishable in prestigious international journals.

This thematic volume can hope only to shed selective light on the issue of medical LSP, but we hope it will provide interesting reading, also for those who take a general, non-medical interest in language for special purposes.

Morten Pilegaard