At present the majority of scientific publications and technical documents are either written in English or translated into English. The aim of the article is to analyse the role of English as lingua franca in science and technology, and the ways how it facilitates professional communication and exchange of information. Contemporary technical text is characterized by the growing degree of internationalization of terminology. Internationalisms borrowed from English constitute a significant part of the language for science and technology in the majority of national languages in the world. In the recent decades, the process of borrowing of internationalisms, which has always been characteristic of professional language use, has become even more intense.