European Journal of Cardio-thoracic Surgery 18 (2000) 642±648

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Honoured guest lecture

The language of science q

John R. Ben®eld a,*, Kathryn M. Howard b
a
Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The University of California at Davis Medical Center, University of California at Davis, Sacramento, CA, USA
b
Department of Applied Linguistics, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Received 8 October 2000; accepted 11 October 2000

1. Introduction surgeons to write English¼It is like the French complaining

I am honored by President Joachim Hasse and the
European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery
(EACTS) to have been invited to speak to you today. It is
a special pleasure because to celebrate the millennium the
Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and EACTS are honor-
ing one another, and the seeds for this coming together
began on both sides of the Atlantic during the year I had
the privilege of presiding at the STS.
Why did I hope the language of science might be of
interest to you? The EACTS, with English as its of®cial
language, is one of the great international melting-pots of
thoracic surgery. For many of you English is a second
language, and I supposed that this might present you with
more challenge in presenting your work than it would be to
do so in your own languages.
Why is this topic of interest to me? I was stimulated to
think about differences between the research environment in
the US and elsewhere when David Nahrworld sounded an
alarm in 1995 with the observation that the number of publi-
cations from US authors in peer-reviewed surgical journals
had been decreasing [1]. He said `The most striking ®nding
was the dramatic, signi®cant fall in the number of¼research
pages from the US and the increase in¼pages from coun-
tries other than the US¼' Most of the American Surgical
Association audience believed this re¯ected a decrease in
time and funds allotted to research in the US. It took a
French colleague, during the discussion period, to reassure
us Americans and to make us chuckle. Professor Henri
Bismuth of Villejuif, France responded by saying that this
`¼may re¯ect the increased ability of non-American
q
Presented at the 14th Annual Meeting of the European Association for
Cardio-thoracic Surgery, Frankfurt, Germany, October 9±11, 2000.
* Corresponding author. Present address: 11611 Terryhill Place, Los
Angeles, CA 90049, USA. Tel.: 1 1-310-889-9186; fax: 11-310-889-
9196.
E-mail address: jrbmd@worldnet.att.net (J.R. Ben®eld).
of more Americans in French restaurants. It does not mean
that French taste is losing.' John Waldhausen, editor emer-
itus of our sister journal, added perspective by saying, `¼we
should be thankful that these manuscripts are¼in English
rather than in Mandarin Chinese, the language spoken by
more people than any other in the world.'
Shortly after the Nahrwold±Bismuth±Waldhausen
exchange that called attention to language, my interest
was further stimulated when I lectured in Vienna. My
offer to speak in Viennese German, my ®rst language, was
politely declined in favor of English ± their of®cial
language. I then realized how much more work it would
have been for me to speak in my mother tongue than in
my daily language. During the discussion period, which
was in German, my audience understood better, and
expressed itself more clearly and succinctly, in its own
language than in English. This was true despite their sophis-
tication and good knowledge of English. Subsequent visit-
ing professorships in the Netherlands, France and Japan
enhanced my awareness of the language burden faced by
English second language scientists.
My personal editorial experience for the Annals of Thor-
acic Surgery (ATS), the European Journal of Cardio-
thoracic Surgery, and a number of other journals has
made me sensitive to today's topic. In addition, friends in
Europe and Asia, who have impeccable skill in their own
languages, have repeatedly asked me to review or edit
manuscripts from the language viewpoint. Ladies and
gentlemen, with native tongues other than English, my hat
is off to you. You have accepted and coped admirably with
an English language burden, and my hope is that you will
see my remarks as constructive.
I began my audacious venture into language studies by
consulting the late Professor Victoria Fromkin, former
chairperson of our UCLA Department of Linguistics. She
reminded me that mathematics is the most durable language
of science and she stressed a commonalty among written

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 J.R. Ben®eld, K.M. Howard / European Journal of Cardio-thoracic Surgery 18 (2000) 642±648 643

and spoken languages. Professor Fromkin also said that Table 1

language is a political weapon, modi®ed by social and Languages used in medical publications cited in medline [5]
economic differences. Christine Holten of our Department 1980 (%) 1990 (%) 1996 (%)
of Applied Linguistics, encouraged and guided my start and
she introduced me to my co-author, Kathy Howard. Kathy is English 72.2 79.5 88.6
German 5.8 3.9 2.2
completing her doctoral thesis and was recently awarded a
Japanese 2.8 2.6 1.8
Fulbright Scholarship for linguistic studies in Thailand. She Spanish 1.3 1.5 1.2
has been teaching English to international UCLA graduate
students who scored low on a routine pro®ciency test, and
she brings the perspective of a language professional to Indeed, when my father earned his Doctor of Medicine
today's topic. degree from the University of Vienna in 1924, German
was clearly the language of science and US academic
surgeons regularly took periods of their education in the
2. Historical background great surgical clinics of Europe partially in quest of a work-
ing knowledge of German. For example, my chairman,
The evolution of the language of science from Egyptian, Lester R. Dragstedt of the University of Chicago, was a
Greek, Arabic, Latin, French and German to English has physiologist who had essentially all of his surgical educa-
certainly been a function of the amount of information tion in Europe before he became one of the world's great
that was being transmitted in a particular language. The gastrointestinal surgeons. After World War II, when politi-
changes that occurred were entirely compatible with Profes- cal and economic strength centered in the English speaking
sor Fromkin's contention that the choice of language is nations, English became the language of science. The conti-
related to politics and economics. The oldest medical writ- nuing growth of the use of English in medicine is shown in
ing is the Kahun Papyrus which deals with veterinary medi- Table 1. We in the US have been enriched by the in¯ux of
cine and women's diseases [2]. The earliest known written international scientists into our laboratories and clinics.
communications about surgery are the Edwin Smith Papyri,
which came from Egypt in about the 17th century BC. These
3. English as the language of science
relics can now be found at the Royal College of Surgeons of
England. Hippocrates (460±370 BC) illustrates the impor-
How have publications and scientists adapted to English
tant place of Greek among the languages of science, albeit
as the language of science? With no effort to be complete,
that the enduring oath attributed to him was probably not his
we identi®ed 11 journals relevant to our specialty that chan-
writing, and some scholars have even questioned his exis-
ged from their native languages to English between the
tence. Maimonides (1135±1204), a great Hebrew physician,
years 1963 and 1998. It was not surprising that Hans
philosopher and ethicist, wrote in Arabic and Hebrew.
Borst, in 1978, was the ®rst one in our specialty to shepherd
Perhaps if Maimonides were alive today, the tensions in
the change from its native tongue to English. The journals
the Middle East could be resolved. As the strength of the
that changed their languages to English included nine in
Romans increased, the language of science became Latin.
Germany and two in Japan. Three of these 11 journals are
Latin remained a prerequisite for medical education in
in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery. We found it inter-
Europe until about 20 years ago, and to this day most scien-
esting that the current editor of the European Journal of
ti®c terms and names are still based on Greek or Latin. In the
Plastic Surgery, which changed from German to English
17th and 18th centuries French was perhaps the most impor-
in 1986, is I.T. Jackson, a Fellow of the Royal College of
tant language of science, sharing its prominence with
Surgeons, who works in South®eld, Michigan, and who
German. In the latter part of the 19th century and the
early part of the 20th century, the Bismarck era, French Table 2
remained the language of diplomacy, but German became Selected journals that changed from native tongue to English
the dominant language of science. Around the turn from the
Current name Same original name When
19th to the 20th century Bismarck is said to have been asked
what had been the most signi®cant development in his life- The Thoracic and No 1978
time. He replied `the fact that North America speaks Cardiovascular Surgeon
English' [3]. This was an amazingly farsighted comment! Journal of Experimental No 1991
Animal Science
German deserves special attention because it is the
Annals of Thoracic and No 1995
immediate predecessor of English as the language of Cardiovascular surgery
science. Professor Ulrich Ammon of Duisburg has pointed Journal of Cancer Research No 1997
out that from 1908 to 1937 there were 8 Nobel Laureates in and Clinical Oncology
Physiology and Medicine from Russia, Sweden, Great Brit- Japanese Journal of No 1998
Thoracic and
ain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Hungary who had signif-
Cardiovascular Surgery
icant portions of their scienti®c education in Germany [4].
644 J.R. Ben®eld, K.M. Howard / European Journal of Cardio-thoracic Surgery 18 (2000) 642±648
Table 3
Editors' responses about change from native tongue to English
Accomplished goals
The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon Yes
Journal of Experimental Animal Science ± New board
Annals of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Yes
Surgery
Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Yes
Oncology
Japanese Journal of Thoracic and Not yet
Cardiovascular Surgery
appears to be native English speaking. Editing and publish-
ing in science has indeed become international!
The 11 editors of the journals that had changed their
languages to English were queried by mail as to why the
language change had been undertaken and whether the
change had achieved the desired goals. We received ®ve
responses from the survey (Table 2). These included three
from the current or past editors of publications in thoracic
and cardiovascular surgery, and two from the editors of the
interdisciplinary journals that focus upon cancer research
and animal science. Three of the ®ve editors said that the
change had accomplished the goals of greater readership
and attracting better, more international manuscripts
(Table 3). One editor of a journal that was founded in
1953, which changed its name in 1998, expressed his
concern that the name change had not yet fully accom-
plished the goal of attracting more `world class' manuscripts
to his journal. While he may have been unrealistic in his
hope to achieve his journal's goals within two years, this
editors' answer suggests the possibility that a change in
language may not be enough to alter manuscript submission
patterns. None of the journals suffered any resignations from
their editorial boards as a result of the language change.
However, the Journal of Experimental Animal Science
elected to appoint an entirely new editorial board as part
of the change, and the Japanese Journal of Thoracic and
Cardiovascular Surgery added 13 new members to its
board. Up to four additions to the support staffs were
made as a result of the change from native tongues to
English.
What has been the experience of the ATS, which I have
Table 4
Acceptance rates of manuscripts submitted to the Annals of Thoracic
Surgery in 1999 a
Four NS nations b 78 (71±93)%
Top ®ve NNS c nations 54 (39±64)%
Next ®ve NNS nations 45 (25±82)%
a
The number of manuscripts varied from 4 to 60 among NNS nations and
from 13 to 215 among NS nations. Calculations were not weighted for the
number of manuscripts from each nation.
b
NS ˆ native (English) speaking Australia, England, Canada, US.
c
NNS ˆ non-native English speaking.
Additions to editorial board Additions to staff
8 1
0
0 2
Yes 1
13 4
had the privilege of serving for 22 years, with international
authors? Thomas B. Ferguson, the Editor Emeritus, and
Carol L. Blasberg, the Administrative Editor Emeritus
provided me with the information I needed to address that
question, and I am grateful to them for this. From 1995±
1999 we have been delighted to see ATS become more
international as illustrated by an increase of manuscripts
from international authors from 52% of 1778 manuscripts
to 59% of 2185 papers. During the same ®ve-year period the
number of manuscripts received from non-native speaking
(NNS) authors increased 40% as compared to a modest 5%
increase in manuscripts from authors in the US and Canada.
During the year 1999, our most proli®c international contri-
butors were Japan, Germany, Italy, England and France; the
next ®ve were Sweden, Turkey, Switzerland, India, and
Australia. Thus, 80% of our top ten international contribu-
tors were from non-native English speaking (NNS) nations.
The acceptance rates of original articles submitted to
ATS in 1999 are shown in Table 4. The mean acceptance
rate was about 49% among the top ten international contri-
butors as compared to a mean acceptance rate of 78 (71±
93)% for native speaking (NS) authors. Among NS nations,
Australia, submitted 14 original articles of which 13 were
accepted, and thus the Australians had the highest accep-
tance rate of 93%.
4. Language burdens of NNS authors
We wanted to focus upon the language burdens of NNS
authors. Toward this goal, we reviewed the manuscripts and
all correspondence for all 50 original articles about lung
cancer from volumes 65±68 of ATS. There were 27 papers
from NNS authors from Japan, France, Italy, the Nether-
lands, Austria, Taiwan, Germany, Switzerland and Korea.
The 23 NS papers were from the United States, Canada,
Australia and the United Kingdom. Case reports, review
articles and letters to the editor were not included. The
signi®cance of differences between NS and NNS manu-
scripts was evaluated using Student's t-test. This statistical
method was imperfect because the number of reviewers for
the various manuscripts differed from one to four, but we
chose to use an imperfect method in preference to using
none at all.
 J.R. Ben®eld, K.M. Howard / European Journal of Cardio-thoracic Surgery 18 (2000) 642±648
Table 5
Reviewers recommendations for lung cancer articles submitted to Annals of
Thoracic Surgery 1997±1999 a
NS (mean rate in %) b NNS (mean rate in %) c
Accept 41 25
Revise 50 63
Reject 9 12
a
The differences in recommendations for acceptance and revision were
signi®cant (P , 0:05). There was no signi®cant difference in the rate of
recommendations for rejection.
b a
Native speaking authors.
c
Non-native speaking authors.
4.1. Acceptance rates
The reviewer's recommendations for the 50 lung cancer
articles are shown in Table 5. The rate at which the manu-
scripts were given an accept, revise or reject recommenda-
tion by individual reviewers was calculated. In the initial
reviews, NNS authors' manuscripts were given an accept
evaluation by 24% of the reviewers, on average, as
compared to 41% for NS authors (P , 0:05). However, all
manuscripts, including those that had been accepted, were
required to be revised once before they were published.
There was no signi®cant difference between NS and NNS
manuscripts in the rejection rates.
4.2. Ratings
The originally submitted manuscripts had been rated by
reviewers as a routine part of the ATS editorial process on a
scale of 1±4. This scale, wherein 4 is the highest rating, had
been applied in the categories of scienti®c accuracy, origin-
ality, interest to readers. The mean ratings of NS manu-
scripts varied from 2.76 to 2.81 for NS manuscripts and
from 2.57 to 2.83 for NNS manuscripts. Thus, there was
no difference in quality between NS and NNS manuscripts
as judged by the reviewers by these criteria.
4.3. Reviewers' comments
We categorized these comments according to language,
organization (genre) or writing quality, using criteria for
each of these categories as described below. Table 6
shows that the number of NNS manuscripts that received
at least one comment was apparently far greater than the
number of comments for NS manuscripts. However, only
the numbers pertaining to language and writing quality
achieved statistical signi®cance.
4.4. Language
Any comment that mentioned a problem with the
language, including any speci®c or general comments
about grammar, word choice, and inappropriate register or
style, as well as suggestions for the reformulation of speci®c
645
Table 6
Manuscripts that received at least one comment about communications
skill a
NS% (n ˆ 23) b NNS% (n ˆ 27) c
Language 8 (35) 20 (74)
Organization
Discussion 5 (22) 11 (41)
Results or methods 4 (17) 8 (30)
Other 0 5 (19)
Quality of writing 13 (61) 22 (82)
The most signi®cant differences (P ˆ 0:003) were in the categories of
language and quality of writing (P ˆ 0:03).
b
Native speaking authors.
c
Non-native speaking authors.
sentences or passages. In this most frequent category, eight
of 23 NS manuscripts or 35% prompted comments as
compared to 20 of 27 or 74% of NNS manuscripts
(P ˆ 0:003). The total number of errors in the category
was 11 for NS manuscripts and 20 for NNS papers. The
number of comments per manuscript varied from 0±3 for
NS manuscripts and 0±23 for NNS papers. The following
are examples of comments in this category: One reviewer
said `Some of the English structure and spelling needs revi-
sion. 'Another reviewer for a different manuscript said `I
would suggest you send it to your `grammar police'.' More
speci®c comments, with which we did not always agree,
included `The term metastatic lung cancer is ill advised'
or `The sentence `¼does not make any sense.'
4.5. Organization (genre)
Any comments about problems with the appropriate
structuring of the manuscript, including comments about
organization, length, or appropriateness of any section of
the manuscript. The frequency with which reviewers
commented about organization was apparently greater, but
without statistical signi®cance, for NNS manuscripts as
compared to NS. The following are examples of comments
in this category: One reviewer said `The discussion is not
precise, but rambles'. For another article, a reviewers said
`The discussion is long and is often more a thesis and testi-
mony¼rather than a discussion of the author's data.' An
example of a more speci®c comment was `The selection
criteria should be in the Materials and methods and not in
the Results.'
4.6. Writing quality
Any positive or negative comment about the quality of
the writing that did not ®t into either the category of
language or organization. The frequency with which
reviewers commented about writing quality in NNS manu-
scripts was greater than that for NS manuscripts (P ˆ 0:03).
The following are examples of comments in this category:
One reviewer said `This section needs to be re-written so
that the reader can understand what the authors are trying to
646 J.R. Ben®eld, K.M. Howard / European Journal of Cardio-thoracic Surgery 18 (2000) 642±648
explain.' and another said `The paper is very poorly written
and is very dif®cult to understand.'
4.7. Error analysis
A randomly selected group of 20 manuscripts, including
ten each from NS and NNS authors, was chosen for error
analysis by a language professional (KMH). The reviewers
comments regarding linguistic issues were compared to the
®ndings of the language professional. When error analysis
of the ®rst ®ve of the NS manuscripts revealed no `errors',
we decided not to pursue analysis of the remaining ®ve NS
manuscripts and to focus our efforts upon the ten NNS
papers. A total of 263 errors, distributed as shown in
Table 7 were found. The three most common types of errors
were as follows: incorrect use of an article, improper word
choice, sentence structure that was grammatically incorrect.
An example of a typical missing article was `Therefore
metastases which relapse in the lung in a surgically treatable
manner should be considered as indication for reoperation. '
Improper word choice was illustrated by `Our study votes
for surgical treatment of patients with recurrent resectable
pulmonary metastases.' An example of an ungrammatical
sentence structure was `These studies¼have promoted us
use MVP chemotherapy in this study.'
4.8. Correlation of reviewer comments and error analysis
The peer reviewers made 51 comments about language as
compared to 263 errors that were identi®ed by the language
professional. The difference in the focus of the peers and the
language professional was shown by the fact the type and
number of errors identi®ed by the peers and the language
professional did not uniformly coincide. Incorrect usage of
articles was found by the language expert to constitute the
largest number of errors in the manuscripts. Peer reviewers
focused more often on word choice, and the need for correc-
tion of grammatical errors in a general way. An example
where one reviewer noted improper word choice was when
he noted a sentence that read ` The rate of silent metastasis is
considered to be actually smaller...' and suggested that this
be rewritten to read, `The rate of silent metastasis may actu-
ally be lower¼'
Table 7
Error analysis of ten manuscripts by non-native speaking authors a
Total number of errors 263
Missing or incorrect article 52
Improper word choice 49
Ungrammatical sentence 28
structure
a
The above were the most common types of errors; 134 other errors each
comprised less than 10% of the total number found.
4.9. Comparison of changes made by language
professionals versus professional peer
Several unclear passages were chosen from NNS manu-
scripts that were from ATS, and from two NNS manuscripts
not from ATS. Many passages noted to be unclear or subop-
timum by the peer reviewers went unnoticed by language
experts. For example, an article that had been edited by a
German language professional included a sentence that
read, `A 31-year-old female presented with relapsing,
severe hemoptysis after suffering from coughing and
asthma-like attacks since 1.5 years.' This was revised by
one of us (JRB) to read `A 31-year-old woman presented
with recurrent severe hemoptysis after having suffered from
coughing and asthma-like attacks since she was 18 months
old.' The peer reviewer was better equipped to advise the
authors about word choice, especially regarding precision in
using medical terminology. In the same paper, the original
version said `¼intra-operatively, no mention was made to
any injury to the ipsilateral bronchial system.', and the peer
reviewers said `¼ the operative report made no mention of
any encounters with the bronchial system.' Here, the trans-
lator's passive voice formulation `intra-operatively no
mention was made¼' was changed to the active voice
`the operative report made no mention¼' This change
also required a change in word choice from `intra-opera-
tively' to `the operative report'. The word choice changes
in the above examples would not likely have been made by
non-expert editors or translators because they require a tech-
nical knowledge of the ®eld of medicine.
We found that changes made more easily by the peer
reviewers often clari®ed passages in which it was unclear
to what a noun or pronoun referred. In English we use
reduced versions of the full noun phrases-inde®nite noun
phrases, pronouns, and demonstratives to refer to earlier
mentioned objects or persons. However, these conventions
differ from language to language and they are dif®cult to
master. Sometimes these reduced nouns or pronouns are
ambiguous, i.e. one can no longer identify to what they
refer. For this reason peer reviewers are better equipped
than language professionals to identify the missing informa-
tion and to correct the text. Examples we found are as
follows: The NNS author and language professional said
`Tracheobronchial injuries are usually caused by blunt,
penetrating, inhalation or iatrogenic traumas and most of
them occur within 2.5 cm from the carina; lobar or segmen-
tal bronchi are seldom affected.' The peer NS editor said
`Tracheobronchial injuries are usually caused by blunt,
penetrating, inhalation or iatrogenic trauma. Most injuries
from blunt trauma occur within 2.5 cm distal to the carina;
lobar or segmental bronchi are seldom affected.' In the
language professional's ®rst version, the noun phrase
`most of them' could refer either to all tracheobronchial
injuries, or to those caused by blunt trauma. The peer
reviewer was able to clarify this passage by replacing the
ambiguous pronoun `them' with a full noun phrase modi®ed
 J.R. Ben®eld, K.M. Howard / European Journal of Cardio-thoracic Surgery 18 (2000) 642±648
by a prepositional phrase `injuries from blunt trauma'. It is
possible that a language expert could notice this ambiguity
of reference, but, he or she would need clari®cation from the
author or from a medical expert before reformulating the
passage. The point we wish to make is that authors and
language experts should work together.
Our observations are in keeping with those of an inde-
pendent language professional who said that`¼feedback
given by non-expert writing teachers¼addresses¼pro-
blems of form and/or presentation, whereas¼the feedback
of experts¼focuses on ideas and content' [6]. This rein-
forces our contention that language professionals and peer
reviewers have separate but complementary roles in the
publication process.
5. Discussion
What has our study shown? Scienti®c publishing and the
use of English have become more international than ever
before. NNS authors in ATS have adapted well to the use
of English, but they have had to work harder than NS
authors. Language professionals can identify patterns of
dif®culties for NNS authors. Professional peers are better
than language professionals in helping NNS authors to
convey their messages well. In general, neither peers nor
language professionals alone suf®ce to make the best of
NNS manuscripts, and so input from both should be
obtained.
In the ideal world we would have an eternal international
language of science that everyone would master. However,
dialects, jargons and subtleties interfere with this throughout
the world and also among English speaking people. Winston
Churchill addressed this issue when he said that the English
and the Americans are two people separated by a common
language. The thesaurus alludes to subtle differences in
language by giving the words dialect, speech, idiom, verna-
cular, jargon as synonyms. My experience when we visited
the Jacquemart Andre Museum in Paris while on our way to
participate in the May meeting of the European Association
of Science Editors (EASE) also illustrated the issue of
language subtleties. The place mats for the museum restau-
rant acknowledge the importance of English by forbidding
cigarette smoking in two languages. It says, `Votre amour
de l'art est certainement plus grand que votre deÂsir de fumer.
Merci de vous abstenir.' In another corner it says, `Please
accept our thanks for not smoking. As an art lover you will
appreciate the need to refrain.' The French version started
with the love of art and the English version started by asking
one not to smoke. In Chicago we might simply have had a
`No smoking' sign, and in Frankfurt it might say `Rauchen
verboten'. My point is that some of the beauty of language
lies in its subtleties. In any language, the ability to express
subtleties and to appreciate them, is a mark of mastery.
However, it is unrealistic to expect all NNS scientists to
master the subtleties of English.
647
How well can one expect a non-native English speaker to
do with English? We have con®rmed that some NNS
authors do superbly with English, and for others it is very
hard work. This variable ability to learn second languages,
as well as the difference between learning to write and to
speak, is illustrated by a remarkable Chinese author who
came to Brandeis University in 1985 as an adult, having
previously been an soldier in Mao's army. He is now Profes-
sor of English at Emory University. In 1996 he won the
Flannery Award for Short Fiction. In 1997 he won the
PEN/Hemingway Award, and last year he was the National
Book Award Winner for a book entitled `Waiting' which I
recommend to all of you. Had time permitted, I would have
read you some passages from his book to illustrate the
beauty of his writing. However, he apparently cannot
speak English very well because in the New York Times
it said, `The eÂmigre novelist, a former soldier under Mao,
still has trouble speaking English. So how can he write like
Henry James?' [7].
In thoracic surgery some of our NNS authors write well,
but they do not speak well. That's quite alright, and we need
to be tolerant of that, particularly since most of us don't
speak their languages at all. I suggest that we be so tolerant
as to establish a mechanism whereby we encourage thoracic
surgeons who write English well but cannot speak it as well
can have their papers presented by a colleague who does
speak well. It's better to have a delegate present one's work
clearly than to impair the message through language that the
audience cannot understand.
Before closing, I would like to tell you some of what I
have learned in the past year about how some of our NNS
colleagues have coped with the English language burden.
During last Fall's meeting of the Japanese Association for
Thoracic Surgery, where I was given the courtesy of deli-
vering my address in English, I learned that there is an
Institute Medical Communications Center in Tokyo which
was established `to increase the contributions to the inter-
national research literature from Tokyo Medical University
and....to develop their medical English ability and to
enhance their ability to communicate internationally.' The
founder and still leader is the American, Professor J. Patrick
Barron. Barron wrote me that he was at ®rst reluctant to
undertake projects in thoracic surgery, but decided to accept
when Professor Hayata assured him that he would teach
Barron enough thoracic surgery to do his job. At the
National Cancer Hospital in Tokyo each of the regular
weekly conferences is once each month held completely
in English. As a result of this, the participants in a confer-
ence to which my hosts took me without forewarning were
able to change to English essentially as I walked in the door.
In Europe there is a remarkable group of language profes-
sionals and editors called the European Association of
Science Editors (EASE) which publishes its bulletin entitled
European Science Editing. When I participated in the EASE
meeting in Tours last May, Professor Jacques Lansac
welcomed the group on behalf of the University of Tours
648 J.R. Ben®eld, K.M. Howard / European Journal of Cardio-thoracic Surgery 18 (2000) 642±648
with a wonderful description of the history and the mystery
and beauty of the region. He spoke well in English, but his
message would have been even better in his classic, beauti-
ful French. A wonderful wine tasting session that followed
was conducted by a charming young French lady, assisted
by an American translator who lives and works in Paris. The
point is that Europeans, Asians and NNS authors in general
have met us more than half way in adapting to English as an
international language, and we should be grateful for those
efforts. As we returned from Tours to Paris, Philippe Darte-
velle, of the Marie Lannelongue Hospital and the University
of Paris Sud was kind enough to allow me some insight into
his own formula for success. Dartevelle was preparing to
give a series of lectures in Toronto and he invited me to
participate as he and a language professional, Mr. Thomas
Lowry, were reviewing his slides. I learned that Dartevelle
had ®rst retained Lowry in 1994 to help prepare his address
as the Honored Guest of the STS. Lowry's program for
Dartevelle included making arrangements for Dartevelle
to spend a week living with a family in England. How
many Americans have made an investment of this kind in
order to improve their skill in a language other than
English?
It is a privilege for native English speakers that the
language of science is currently English. With privilege
comes responsibility. To meet this responsibility, I suggest
that we take steps to enhance editors' and reviewers' aware-
ness of the added burden English imposes upon non-native
speakers. I also suggest that each publication consider
developing a mentoring service wherein native speaker
thoracic surgeons are made available to non-native speakers
when they ask for assistance. My experience with such
interchange indicates that the intellectual and personal bene-
®t from such international activity far outweighs the expen-
diture of effort. In addition, our organizations, such as STS
and EACTS should offer workshops, at least in conjunction
with our annual meetings.
In closing, I return to Victoria Fromkin who introduced
me to linguistics when President Hasse accepted my propo-
sal to speak about the language of science. Fromkin's book,
which is one of the basic texts in linguistics, says, `A basic
property of human language is its creative aspect ± a speak-
er's ability to combine the basic linguistic units to form an
in®nite set of `well formed' grammatical sentences, most of
which are novel, never before¼heard.'[8] That's it, ladies
and gentlemen. That's what we need in international thor-
acic surgery in order to communicate and to be sure that our
patients continue to get the best and that our speciality
continues to thrive despite political and economic consid-
erations.
Mr. President, colleagues and friends, I thank you for
your attention.
Acknowledgements
We appreciate the advice we received from language
professionals Christine Holten at the University of Califor-
nia, Los Angeles, Professor John Swales at the University of
Michigan, Professor Charles Bazerman at the University of
California, Santa Barbara and Jenny Gretton of the
European Association of Science Editors.
References
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in major surgical journals is decreasing, Ann Surg 1995;222:263±269.
[2] Lyons AS, Petrucelli RJ. Medicine±an illustrated history. Abradal
Press, 1997. p. 77.
[3] Montgomery SL. The scienti®c voice. New York: The Guilford Press.
1996. p. vii.
[4] Ammon U. Ist Deutsch noch internationale Wissenschaftssprache?
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[5] Ammon U. Ist Deutsch noch internationale Wissenschaftssprache?
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[6] Parkhurst C. The composition process of science writers. English for
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[7] Garner D. Ha Jin's cultural revolution. NY Times Magazine, Feb
2000;6:38±41.
[8] Fromkin V, Rodman R. An introduction to language, 5th ed. New
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