Pius ten Hacken

Word Formation and Transparency in Medical English Pius ten Hacken

As a side effect of the rapid progress in medical research and of the emergence of new medical conditions, medicine is a domain where new concepts have to be named more frequently than in many other domains. Because of the prominent position of English in medical research, most of these concepts are first named in English. This raises questions relating to the naming strategies adopted and the consequences of the choice of particular strategies. These consequences are not restricted to English, because the English terms often need to be translated and are sometimes borrowed. This volume consists of an introduction and eight chapters. The first four chapters focus on the choice of naming strategy and the consequences for the transparency of the resulting names in English. These chapters address the international pharmaceutical nomenclature, the terminology of psychiatry and of middle-ear surgery, and the use of neoclassical word formation. The following four chapters concentrate on the issues of translation and borrowing evolving from the choice of names in English. They address translation into Spanish, Slovak, Polish and Turkish.