Vol. 5/2009 - Facultatea de Litere

particular way of considering a given content according to other cultural conventions so that
to the first denoted content other contents are added, thus becoming connoted contents) and
Bedeutung (i.e., a definition of a historical entity which the culture admits to be an only
person and which, for that reason, represents a denotated content). The general framework
of this chapter, in its following infrastructure, also scrutinizes the semantic system with its
elements (out of which mention is made about oppositions, subsystems, fields and their axes,
semantic fields and their methodological nature).
The third chapter, “Teoria productiei de semne”, opens nine major infrastructure
components, discussing the general plan of the semiotic and factual judgments, the problems
of a typology of signs, a typology of the ways of producing signs, the aesthetic text as an
example of invention, etc. O teorie a semioticii closes with the final chapter, “Subiectul
semioticii”, followed by “Note” and a thirty-three page extremely complex and impressive
bibliography which includes references both to very recent sources (as compared to the
publication of book in the original in 1976), such as Jerzy Pelc (1974), and to very early
specialist literature (see, for one instance, De Jorio, 1832).
Interpreted through the perspective of a translated product, we consider the book as an
inspiring source, both for professional and would-be translators, since it serves both
theoretical and practical aspects of the translation process. Translation difficulties, arising
from the author’s wording (see the translators’ footnote at page 366, the distinctions
suggested by the translators between picture of a man and man-picture) or from the
untranslatability of some specialist terms (see the German-borrowed Sinn and Bedeutung, or
the Latin-borrowed ratio facilis and ratio difficilis) which were loaned as such in Romanian.
All in all, the book addresses a polar readership. If “Introducere: Către o logică a
culturii” and its final chapter, “Subiectul semioticii” (the object of semiotics), are considered,
the book will be accessible to the average reader who is interested in general and at the same
time theoretical views on topics in fashion, so to say, as research (methods and aims) and
conceptual delineations (see, for one example, sense and communication). If the middle
section of the book is classified in terms of its readership, then it addresses that sophisticated,
refined and very well documented readership whose particular interest lies in the study of
semiotics.
References
De Jorio, Andreea (1832) La mimica degli antichi investigate nel gestire, Napoli
Pelc, Jerzy (1974) Semiotics and Logic, Report to the first I.A.A.S. Congress
Floriana Popescu,
“Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi
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