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Introduction In the new globalized world, noise pollution has started to become a public health problem. We searched for publications about noise pollution in our study. In our study, we examined the noise pollution articles in the Web of Science (WoS) database. Material and Methods A total of 2722 papers were identified which were published between 2001 and 2020, finally, 1815 articles were analyzed. VOSviewer (version 1.6.11) tool used for bibliometric web visualizations. Results When trend analysis was applied to the number of articles by years, a statistically significant increase was detected. The United States contributed the most publications. The countries with the most articles per million population were determined to be Scotland, Singapore, and Ireland, respectively. Most articles on noise pollution were published in the journal Applied Acoustics. The three most used keywords are “noise pollution”, “noise” and “traffic noise”. Conclusions This study showed that there has been a trend of an increasing number of articles on noise pollution in recent years. Also it can be considered that this bibliometric study will help identify gaps in the current research data.

The paper aims to point out and assess the mechanism of methodological transformation of the concept of conflict of laws. Within this mechanism, the conflict of laws does not pendulate anymore between the methodologies of multilateralism and unilateralism. Such mechanism suggests that nowadays the multilateralism survives owing to unilateralism itself. This idea is moving in between national legal orders, international legal order and quasi federal legal order of European Union, on the one side, and sets in motion the concept of „overriding or internationally mandatory rules”, on the other side. Our conclusion suggests that nowadays scholars acquired truly on the move identities. Such identities allow them a truly evolutive conceptualisation.

The word „globalisation” is so often treated like a synonym of the world „digitalisation”, without considering the human side of it all. Globalisation isn’t just about the technology of information or about solving as fast as possible the legal problems that occur, it’s also about a series of new challenges, especially when considering the notarial field. The present paper has the purpose of presenting how different situations are solved when a foreign law is applied, so that the notary can offer his client a quality product of law, but at the same time a product that is in accordance with the legislation of more than one member state of the European Union. In the second part, we will analyse the power that a notarial act has when used in another member state of the European Union, also considering the Europea Courts’ of Justice (ECJ) jurisprudence.

Dressed by the legislator in the attire of a legal obligation, tax representation is envisioned as an expression of syncretism, combining features of conventional representation as enshrined over centuries and new characteristics dictated by the specificity of its application field and contemporary economic realities. The practical benefits of this regulation, unquestionably today, are offset by its inherent challenges and limitations, fueling ongoing debates regarding the legal treatment of the tax representative, the boundaries of representation, and their legal responsibility. In this context, the present paper provides an overview of the facets of the tax representation institution for VAT purposes and the implications of its effects within the national legal framework.

Deprivation of liberty of minors is a recognized concern at the national and international level, solutions being sought in order to fulfill the purpose of custodial sanctions, namely the reintegration and prevention of criminal acts committed by minors. In this context, at the European and international level, solutions have been proposed, through which the states may develop an efficient and coherent system that ensures the fulfillment of this goal. Whether they are mandatory or recommendatory, these instruments were taken into account in the creation of the current system for the execution of custodial educative measures in Romania. This paper presents an analysis of the national legislation on custodial educative measures, compared to the standard required by the relevant international instruments, as well as the means that the state involved in the process of reintegration of the juvenile offender have, with a focus on involvement of family, of the minor's legal representatives and state representatives.

The thesis of this paper is connected to those poems that activate a semantic renewal of a different kind of “real” and explore the poetic imaginary of the coronavirus, focusing on how Rodica Braga translates the fear, chaos, shock and bewilderment caused by the pandemic into her poetry. In a close reading analysis we will investigate how the pandemic, with all its effects, has reconstructed reality through a “new normality”, identifying, also, the paradigm shifts that this concept has encountered. We will also focus on how the confinement led to a different kind of reflection of reality and life in writing. Also, in the subsequent interpretative exercise, we will analyze the presence of the author, at a figurative level, in the semantics of autofictional lyrical discourse and observe with the help of relevant examples from Rodica Braga's poems how a broad interpretation of this concept can be useful for understanding the acting roles and avatars adopted by the “I” in the author's works.

This article explores the intersection of 19th-century philosophy with historical events, spotlighting Nietzsche, Bentham, Kierkegaard, and Schopenhauer and their distinct perspectives on suffering as a positive element, reflective of the era's cultural and historical nuances. The first part of the paper is a summary of the 19th century and its noteworthy events. The second part argues that suffering is a constant element of human existence by highlighting conceptual similarities between all four philosophers when they describe the challenges that humans must face. The third part of the paper analyzes the relationship between suffering and self-knowledge. The fourth and last part of the paper explores the mechanism of suffering as an epiphenomenon.

This paper constitutes an encompassing account of the Madonna of Orsanmichele in all its historical instances. As source of the first miracle ever recorded in the city-state of Florence, in 1292, the Orsanmichele Madonna generated a cult that lasted centuries. Considering the extravagant artistic commissions on the site of the granary-turned-church, Orsanmichele became a place of religious worship, and, more importantly, grown into being equated with the political and spiritual identity of Florence. The panel by Bernando Daddi and the tabernacle designed by Andrea Orcagna have generated, I argue, a parallel cult – one revering the exquisite artistic draughtsman ship of the painting and that of its monumental shrine. In this paper I aim to present the dialogue between the Marian cult located at Orsanmichele, starting in the thirteenth century, and the artistic patronage prompted by the popularity of the miracle-making image of the Virgin. My study represents a critical re-visitation of the prominent book by Megan Holmes, The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence, published in 2013.

From its transformation into a taboo and its hiding under the so-called “Moldovan language” or under the euphemistic expression “state language”, to its regained status recognition as an official language, the Romanian language spoken in the Republic of Moldova has undergone impressive reforms in the last 60 years. Meant to erase the awareness of citizens’ ethnic identity and turn a majority language into a minority one, all the laws and regulations issued on the field succeeded in setting numerous barriers for speakers of Romanian in the Republic of Moldova. Either manifested as social constraints or materialized into an assumed rejection of mother tongue usage, all these laws have demonstrated their usefulness and major impact on the Romanian-speaking population. This article is the result of our research carried out over 10 years with the support of students, Moldovan citizens, from the master's degree program "Romanian Language - Identity and Cultural Awareness". Our analysis shows that although the status of the Romanian language in the Republic of Moldova has changed, making the official leap from ”ethnic language” to official state language, speakers still use it with the fear that they are not speaking it correctly and that they might be in danger of using structures that are inappropriate for the Romanian language because that they have many years of experience in using the Russian language as lingua franca. In this paper, we provide arguments to demonstrate the evolution of the Romanian language spoken in Moldova, despite all the social and political barriers imposed over time.

The preparation of a new edition of the work Dialectal Texts. Supplement to the Moldavian Linguistic Atlas (ALM) required the solution of o series of problems, taking into account both the new realities due to the changes that have occurred in the last decades in the Republic of Moldova on a social-political and cultural level, the return to the Latin script and the recognition of the unity of the language spoken on both banks of the Prut river, as well as the principles of editing Romanian dialectal texts, so that the volumes of dialectal texts published in Chisinau could be integrated into the series of similar works published in Romania, forming a whole with them. The paper highlights the solutions identified to reduce the differences compared to the volumes edited by Romanian dialectologists in terms of the way the texts are presented and to transpose as accurately as possible the texts from the phonetic transcription system of the Moldavian Linguistic Atlas, based on the Cyrillic script, into that of the Romanian Linguistic Atlas, which represents the optimal system to transcribe spoken Romanian language.

Polonius, Romanian author Victor Cilincă’s farcical rewriting of Hamlet, is worth mentioning among the many postmodernist adaptations of Shakespeare’s works, despite the fact that it is virtually unknown to both theatregoers and critics. The play premiered in 1996, in Galati, having been ‘hidden’ in the writer’s drawer for more than a decade for fear that censorship might grasp its anti-totalitarian implications. In 2011, it was translated by Petru Iamandi for an American indie press. Prefaced by a brief overview of drawer literature and “refashioning of Shakespeare’s image along the lines of Communist ideology” (Colipcă-Ciobanu 2016: 26), in communist Romania, the paper focuses on the meta-dimension of the two-act play, as well as on the subversive aspects identifiable at the textual level.

Annual excavation campaigns took place between 2007 and 2013 at Iepurești archaeological site, where a surface of 85 sqm was opened at the northern periphery of the settlement. A Bronze Age (Glina culture) habitation layer and pits and Eneolithic (Gumelnița culture) habitation layers, houses and pits were identified. A number of 14 artefacts, representing the entire batch of Gumelnița anthropomorphic figurines discovered so far, is analyzed in this paper. Although this batch is not numerous and it is very fragmented, the observations on the manufacturing method, morphology, decorative techniques, and motifs are all remarkably interesting and complete an image, also fragmented (due to the reduced number of excavations in Gumelnița A1 levels), of a less known type of clay objects as those from the Iepurești settlement. The artefacts will be presented in the context of similar discoveries made in habitation layers attributed to the initial stage of the Gumelnița culture, but also in a larger cultural context, of the influences perceived as coming from neighbouring cultural environments.

This paper is devoted to a technological and typological analysis of the lithic material brought to light within dwelling L1/1993 of the site of the tell type settlement Vitănești-Măgurice, level Gumelnița B1. The lithic inventory is both rich and varied. It consists of 619 items, ascribable to various categories: tools, blades/strips and raw splinters, nucleus, strikers, one axe, as well as lumps and splinters. The range of tools includes some burnt items. The splitting techniques were also analysed. Our study is closed with a petrographic analysis of the raw materials.

The present paper is part of a series of publications related to the research carried out in the last decade in the early Roman contexts from Capidava (Constanța County), as well. The subject of the article is a batch of 17 fragmentary ceramic vessels, belonging to the terra sigillata category. Of these, the first 16 items (Cat. nos. 1-16) are fragments of imported vessels produced in the famous ceramic production centre of La Graufesenque, in South Gaul. The last vessel, Cat. no. 17, is of local production, from the category called Pontic sigillata decorated by the barbotine technique. The entire batch of ceramic material was discovered during the archaeological excavation carried out at the Late Roman headquarters building (principia), during which the foundations of this building were also excavated. Beneath these foundations were discovered the ruins of an early Roman habitation level represented by military barracks-type buildings, a stone-paved street, a well, a rubbish pit and a waste drain that led to that pit. The material presented by us comes from this earliest context, respectively from all the urban planning elements listed above, especially from the waste drain and the rubbish pit. The dating of the material is early, namely the Flavian era until the end of Trajan’s reign. From this point of view, the ceramic material presented here completes the picture provided by other categories of material previously published from the same archaeological context.

The topic of this paper is a Roman cavalry sports helmet, or more specifically two halves of the same item, made out of copper alloy. It is part of a category of highly decorated military equipment, designed for parade or, more precisely, used in equestrian games/processions by cavalrymen of the Roman army. It was discovered in the area of the Islaz Roman fortifications, on the Olt River Roman frontier, the so-called limes Alutanus. The discovery in itself is spectacular. Both parts of the helmet were discovered almost in the same place, in two separate occasions, both accidental, by private citizens, in a time span of four months. The two fragments that form a whole helmet are well preserved and they present a strong point for the Roman presence at Islaz. The item in itself is a rare and beautiful find, this helmet in particular being the second of its kind (type) known to be found in the world. The helmet is from the Vechten Type, or pseudo-Phrygian type, named after its only analogy, the helmet from Vechten (Netherlands).

Radiocarbon dating by AMS accelerated ion mass spectrometry method, used from 2012 at IFIN-HH-Măgurele, offered recently the scientific frame for an interdisciplinary approach, from archaeologic and archaeometric perspectives, applied to wood samples. The first AMS results, issued in 2021 on six samples from Măguricea Branului archaeological site, have suggested a chronology around the 13th century AD, the differences being explained on terms detailed in this paper. The latter four samples, collected in the next archaeological campaign, gave very different dates. The difficulties experienced with these four samples driven us to develop new lab treatment, aiming carbonization of wood. Even so, the samples from 2022 could not be dated in a helpful manner, with parameters as terminus post quem, time-width, apparent ages. The paper could be of interest to archaeologists taking wood samples for AMS dating.

The material evidence of the Roman cult of Mithras is one of the most visible and best-preserved heritage of Roman religion from the period of the 2nd- 4th century AD. There are several in situ and reconstructed mithraea in European archaeological parks and museums, where the memory of the cult and its worshippers are evoked. The paper examines some of the most well-known case studies of the Mithraic sanctuaries, focusing on in situ archaeological sites, reconstructed mithraea and museal spaces from Romania, where new, sensorial methods can be used.

Our paper aims at presenting a controversial outlook on the syntactical/ syntagmatic model stated by D.D. Drașoveanu, based on the so-called "relational meaning", starting from a work of Mircea Minică, Semantica relației în limba română (2018), in which the author considers that the terms of a syntagm are relational in themselves (i.e. "categorical relationality") and not as a result of an external relation (i.e. "relational meaning").

The paper presents four fragmentary anthropomorphic vessels discovered ca. 60 years ago on the territory of Botoșani County, at Cervicești – La Morișcă (Mihai Eminescu commune) and Drăgușeni – Ostrov (Drăgușeni commune), left unpublished in the collections of the Botoșani County Museum. Starting from the presentation of these artefacts and integrating similar discoveries from the Gumelnița, Stoicani‑Aldeni and Cucuteni cultural areas, the work analyses the metamorphoses of a particular type of anthropomorphic vessel in the area of the Cucuteni civilization. More precisely, the paper follows typologically the transformation of the base of the vessels from the anthropomorphic silhouette naturalistically figured, with the anatomical profile correctly rendered, with the soles and feet clearly indicated, to the intermediate rhomboidal sole and then to the ovoid or circular base. Confirming the hypothesis of Gumelnița influences penetrating the Cucuteni environment, the analysis of the new materials and the typological connections illustrate and highlight the role of a transmission vector and intermediary between the North and the South that the Stoicani‑Aldeni cultural environment played for contemporary or immediately subsequent Eneolithic communities during the second half of the 5th millennium BC

The analysis was made upon a set of 27 pieces that had been discovered in the South Sector during the archaeological campaigns carried out between 2003 and 2020. In the study were included the pieces from the early Roman period. Therefore, the purpose of the present paper is to provide an overview of a group of previously unpublished Early Roman lamps. The occurrence of a unique lamp mark on the territory of Romanian Dobrudja is also reported. Given the circumstances that this category received little attention within the published materials, provide an important contribution to a future endeavour to gather all the available artifacts in a corpus dedicated to Histria’s lamps

This paper has been composed as the second in a series on the archaeological research undertaken in 2008 and 2018– 2020 at the large (Reformed) church of Aiud Fortress. The first study of the series has consisted of a brief presentation of the main data collected inside the monument. This second study presents even more briefly the main data collected outside the monument, as they appeared in more convoluted and fragmentary contexts. These excavations have established the main stratigraphic sequence of this area of Aiud Fortress as consisting of Roman age habitation in mortarless structures, followed by a hiatus, then by an early‑second‑millennium settlement, with at least two phases, which similarly made use only of mortarless structures. Despite its long existence, and even though sources infer the existence of local priests in the 13th century, there is no solid ground to contest, based on archaeological data, the traditional ascription of the small church (erected 1333– 1334, demolished and rebuilt 1865– 1866) as the beginning of religious masonry building at Aiud – and likely of the present‑day religious site. Nevertheless, the development of the large church of the fortress remains uncertain. Research conducted inside the current building has revealed that it was preceded by a smaller, yet still Gothic, church. Research conducted outside the building helped establish that the eastern part of the church was build first, in several phases, and only afterward was the body of the church also expanded. However, the western parts of the current structure show obvious signs of rebuilding, and dismantled structures indicate that the tower was not initially part of the extended planimetry. Due to the partial nature of the investigation, archaeology cannot yet establish the succession of the construction phases involved, or what they exactly involved, nor can it help in solving the questions raised by the varied modifications noticeable in the aboveground structure. While most late‑ and post‑medieval results presented below relate to the large church, they also include data about the small one, about a series of built structures identified in the area between the two churches and west of the large one, and about the overall development of the site, severely marked by arson and destruction in the early 18th century. The graveyard and materials are only mentioned, and not discussed, as they’ll be the subject of following papers

The paper presents six samples originating from archaeologically investigated contexts in the Early Iron Age site of Saharna–Țiglău. Three samples were collected, after anthropological analysis, from funerary features excavated in 2022, and the remaining samples were taken from pits within the settlement. Calibration of the six AMS radiocarbon data places the chronological sequence with a 95.4% probability in the range calBC 1284-797. From the association of the data, it is almost obvious to conclude that one of the earliest known dates for an Early Iron Age context with stamped pottery in the Carpathian-Balkan area has been recorded at Saharna–Țiglău.

This paper looks into four plays by Chilean playwright Carla Zúñiga. It specifically analyses gender deconstruction, as it is very relevant in all the selected plays. The text also identifies and reflects on the camp (Sontag) features that the plays and their mise en scenes exhibit. It is relevant to this aspect to consider Camp features being specifically localized in the Latin American context. One last aspects that will be un folded in the text is the aesthetic and political links between the plays and Chile’s historical and cultural background.

Although the existence of internal ethnic diversity within Deaf communities is recognized by several authors, there has been less analysis of the impact of the ethnicity of marriage partners on the development and transmission of identity within Deaf families. This paper addresses language use and crossgenerational identity transmission in ethnic minority or ethnically mixed families set up by Deaf spouses living in Oradea (Romania). The research conducted in the Deaf community of Oradea is based on a survey of ethnic Hungarian Deaf community members (including ethnic Romanian spouses), lifepath interviews with selected Deaf individuals, and family case studies. The research results denote that in the case of Deaf people living in ethnically homogenous marriages who have graduated from a special school in Hungarian language, the transmission of Hungarian identity, knowledge of Hungarian sign language/oral language tends to be a natural, undisturbed process. However, if one of the spouses is of Romanian ethnicity, the language of communication within the family will probably be Romanian sign language/oral language. On the other hand, in families where both minority and majority ethnic family members, Deaf and hearing, are present, complex, multifaceted patterns of linguistic communication may operate, favoring specific multicultural ways of developing and transmitting identity.

Up to now, quality of life (QOL) research has been guided by several conceptual frameworks that allow for the generation of rather general approaches to QOL with very fragmented explanatory contributions, while no specific conceptual models can be identified in the literature. This paper, which is based on a critical review of mainstream literature, aims to highlight the main difficulties in building a conceptual model of QOL and to propose a model that can overcome some of the current issues. The difficulties in constructing such a conceptual model stem mainly from the variety of definitions and the range assigned to the concept of QOL, the consequent operationalisation of the concept, the relativity and multidimensionality of the concept and the subsequent problems with unidimensional measures. This paper proposes a conceptual model that adopts an individual perspective on the theoretical construct and introduces several novel ideas for building a comprehensive explanatory framework for QOL. The following developments and improvements are suggested with the purpose of clarifying the intricate field of QOL research and closing in on a conceptual model: honing in on essential dimensions instead of constantly expanding the concept, increasing the effort put into theorising about QOL, adopting a life course perspective, generating longitudinal data and utilising research on agency. There is a high need for the development of a conceptual model of QOL and the concurrent integration of QOL approaches, at least at the European level, as this would contribute to fostering the advancement of the QOL research field and highlighting core European values regarding QOL standards.

The strategic scientific management of cultural and research institution is put under scrutiny in the paper The strategic management of scientific research [Managementul cercetării științifice] by the author Meda Gâlea. To better improve the strategic scientific management, the author dives into the history of an important Romanian research institute, the Romanian Academy, and into its management style in relation to the research developed. To substantiate the results, and to support the development of the formula that underpins the decision-making process in the management of a scientific institution, the author uses actual scientific literature, corelated with the research carried out among the research and technical staff of the Romanian Academy in Iași. The most important takeaway of this scientific paper is the PRA-nX formula used to facilitate decision making in terms of economic management for better scientific performance.

The object of the study is the Odesa region and its activities in the field of cross-border cooperation with the neighboring territories of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. The paper examines the theoretical foundations of cross-border cooperation. The concept of cross-border cooperation is defined, its main forms are defined, the foreign experience in this field is summarized and a method for determining the effectiveness of the Euroregion's activities is proposed. Cross-border activity in the Odesa region was analyzed. Factors affecting the effectiveness of cross-border cooperation are identified. A SWOT analysis of the main economic indicators affecting the functioning of the Euroregion was developed. The effectiveness of such activities is analyzed. The main directions for improving cooperation in the economic sphere are proposed, namely the creation of a tripartite joint body for attracting foreign direct investment, the creation of cross-border clusters, in particular, the creation of a joint strategic plan for the development of areas such as the agro-industrial complex, tourism and transport are proposed.

Nowadays, ensuring a balance between the right to freedom of expression of journalists and the right to protection of reputation represents a challenge for many states, including the Republic of Moldova. Although journalists are allowed to spread information that offends, shocks or disturbs, they are called to Court often by the subjects of their articles, even in front of The European Court of Human Rights. In some cases, the Cout gives justice to the journalists, considering that articles respect the principles of responsible journalism. In other cases, the Court concluded that journalists exceeded the limits of freedom of expression, holding that there had been a violation of article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights regarding the right to protection of reputation. The paper aims to analyse the role of The European Court of Human Rights in restoring the balance between these two rights, relying on Case of Busuioc v. Moldova, Case Timpul Info-Magazin and Anghel v. Moldova, Case Flux and Samson v. Moldova, Case Savițchi v. Moldova.

This article analyses the legal regime of land adopted by the Romania and other member states by reference to European legal norms. In this sense, the paper is divided into three parts. The first part is intended for the national legal framework, in the form of a chronological axis before and after the accession at the European Union. The second part is reserved for Union law, by analysing the regulations and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union, in order to observe how the organization's policies regarding free movement should be carried out and how this normative framework is interpreted. The last part is structured in the form of benchmarks of comparative constitutional law of the member states and the ways the Union acts in order to improve the restrictive regime adopted by the states regarding the free movement of land.

Although the Romanian legislation does not define the concept of tax evasion nor that of tax fraud, the specialized doctrine abounds in opinions regarding the extent and content of these concepts, some of them being of European inspiration. At the same time, European legislation has evolved in recent years from the European Commission Recommendation of 6 December 2012 on aggressive tax planning (2012/772/EU) and the Discussion Paper on the Recommendation on aggressive tax planning of the European Commission (Platform/006/2014), to a series of six directives on administrative cooperation in the field of taxation (Directive on Administrative Cooperation), which reflect the authorities’ need to have access to as much information as possible in order to be able to correctly calculate taxes and, in particular, tax on profits made by companies and, implicitly, to combat tax fraud and evasion. The European Commission recommends introducing clauses to exclude artificial agreements in the national tax laws of the Member States, i.e. commercial transactions lacking economic content. They aim to avoid taxation and generate some tax advantages. Therefore, the first directive in the series of 6 (DAC 1) introduced the automatic exchange of information of interest to tax authorities and the standards of tax transparency expanded more and more. The following directives include financial information in the reporting standard, then new concepts such as the anticipated individual tax solution and the advance pricing agreement, after which it moved to country by country reporting, and the DAC 5 includes the standards on authorities’ access to information in order to avoid money laundering. Thus, based on these directives, tax information regarding taxpayers from a certain country can circulate freely between EU tax authorities. Finally, DAC 6 (Directive 2018/822) establishes the rule of reporting cross border transactions at tax risk, as well as the requirement that not only taxpayers, but also certain third parties (or intermediaries) report to the tax authority information regarding tax risks from cross border transactions. This directive aligns the EU’s objectives with the OECD’s objectives, and on 1 September 2022, Romania published Order no. 2048, which implements the EU Directive on country by country reporting (2021/2101). Last but not least, this paper addresses the new concept of aggressive tax planning by identifying it either as a tax evasion instrument or even one of tax fraud, depending on the means used and the fraudulent results obtained, as well as that of fiscal risk analysis seen as a tool to combat aggressive tax planning and tax evasion.

There are different formal structures which requests can be made with depending on the register used and the degree of courtesy. During the teaching process, these structures are introduced according to their recursiveness and difficulty, and not necessarily due to their courtesy. This can cause mismatches between the perception of requests in L2 and in L1. In this paper we intend to analyze if this is really the case, or if there are no differences in the perception of these structures in L1 and L2.

The aim of this paper is to compare the methods of identifying the direct and indirect object in Spanish and Polish. From the author’s point of view, Spanish relies more on semantic methods, while Polish relies more on formal ones, especially those related to the category of case. As the article strives to demonstrate, the two approaches can be significant for the different interpretations of objects in both languages.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of applying the Invited Inferencing Theory of Se-mantic Change in order to establish the semantic evolution of idioms with literal correlates, in particular somatisms or kinegrams. The methodology is applied to analyze the testimonies (until 1700) of Spanish somatism cerrar los ojos in a diachronic corpus of Spanish language (CORDE), so as to find out what inferences generated contextual meanings that conditioned its lexicalization as idiom, semanticizing sym-bolic meanings related to death, sleep, knowledge, irrationality, submission or trust.

The paper analyzes the stylistic variation of implosive /s/ in Guayaquil Spanish. The aim is to verify the sociolinguistic status of /s/-weakening according to Labov’s three-level hierarchy: linguistic indicators, markers, and stereotypes. It is argued that the aspired allophone [h], by representing a clear pattern of stylistic variation, can be qualified as a marker, and since it receives metalinguistic commentary from the speakers, it is also a stereotype in the Guayaquil speech community. The analysis contains a quantitative study of /s/ variation on a corpus of radio speech (CHARG) and a qualitative confrontation of the results with responses gathered in a language attitudes survey.

Learning a foreign language means, first of all, knowing how to speak it, knowing how to use it to communicate in different situations in everyday life. A foreign language is, above all, a means of interaction with others. Therefore, the assessment of oral expression skills plays an essential role in the development of students’ communication skills. We chose to develop this subject in this paper for two main reasons: the first is purely subjective and it results from a reality observed during the experience we had during the RFL courses, as an RFL lecturer who faced the sensitive situation of assessment of students’ oral performances. And the second reason is objective and it refers to the difficulty of evaluating oral production. So, the purpose of this paper is to provide an answer to the question: How do we evaluate the oral productions of learners studying RFL? We propose two solutions that we have verified during our experience, namely: designing grids to evaluate the oral productions of RFL learners and establishing specific criteria to evaluate students’ oral performances. This paper will focus on the presentation of the different forms of oral assessment, its difficulties, as well as the assessment grid that we propose for the assessment of this skill. This mini-research might be of interest because it could inspire teachers to give more importance to the assessment of oral production, which will also have an impact on learners, making them more motivated and aware of their learning process.

The translation is a process that goes beyond linguistic transformations and demands cross-cultural awareness. However, mistakes resulting from apparently similar linguistic structures in the source and target language as well as narrow cultural views can compromise the quality of the translated text. Therefore, the target audience may lose the thread of the text line or be completely misled. The goal of this paper is to discuss the concepts of the first language and cultural interference in the translation process as well as to bring forward some examples of frequent loan translations resulting from this phenomenon. Attempts to translate culture-specific patterns will be illustrated and the applied translation strategies analysis will confirm or refute their efficiency in bringing the source culture closer to the target audience.

Business ethics reflect the norms and developments of each historical period. On the other hand, everyone needs ethics to build a social infrastructure that is vital for progress. At the organizational level managers generally act on the basis of their beliefs, values and strategies financially motivated, and workers interact in various contexts, marked by ethical controversies. Today, a multitude of factors underlie the ethical dilemmas that affect business and individual decisions, in any profession, organization, at the level of each individual's daily activities. These decisions are not only business critical, but also very important in terms of creating or sustaining the right balance within the firm and between the firm and the society in which it operates. This is why the role of ethics is very important these days, with a significant impact in the direction of gaining business reputation and gaining the competitive edge needed to make business as profitable as possible. Ethical management must be based on principles and guidelines that help managers make informed and correct choices, so that they can balance the economic interests with the social responsibilities of the companies they lead. The paper can guide managers who want to understand their own ethical behavior and of others in the organization, it provides guidance to act in an ethical direction.

Introduction. Intersectoral collaboration in public health represents a huge potential for optimizing the three fundamental public health actions: disease prevention, health protection, and healthcare awareness. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the engagement of the parties particularly interested in disease prevention and control. Material and methods. A mixed qualitative and quantitative research (in-depth interviews/questionnaire survey) was carried out in this paper. Results. Most of the respondents assessed the intersectoral cooperation as unsatisfactory and consider that the latest reform of the Public Health Service had a negative impact on it. The pandemic alert caused by the COVID-19 infection served as a catalyst to improve cooperation. The main barriers to collaboration are considered the lack of staff and insufficient communication, various viewpoints and lack of public health knowledge, an overlying complex legal framework, and lack of motivation, which often requires central authority involvement. Conclusions. Some barriers to cooperation can be overcome without any systemic changes and centralized involvement, while more easily achievable measures such as joint training are sufficient. Thus, understanding these aspects can greatly improve the interaction between services.

E-governance is essential for migrants to ease access to various administrative services in their home and destination countries. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed novel facets of inequality in the accessibility of these facilities, the lack of personnel during lockdowns being not the only impediment for foreigners. This paper aims to research the unequal access of the Romanian diaspora in Germany to digital solutions provided by authorities and the unprecedented circumstances that occurred during the medical emergency. The data analysis revealed how people built their e-governance networks on social media groups, providing alternative solutions to their issues and needs. Diaspora's relationships with governmental bodies are often priorly mediated via online communication in diasporic groups, where people ask for advice or present their approaches. Data collection has been done mainly on Facebook groups of Romanian migrants in Germany between 2020 and 2022. Methodologically wise, this research used digital field research to understand how people interact in these groups and what consequences could arise from their digital behaviour.

This paper examines the role of non-profit organizations (NPOs) in supporting welfare benefit claims by Romanian immigrants in vulnerable situations in Berlin. The study utilizes in-depth qualitative interviews with social counsellors, language mediators, and project leads to explore the function of social counselling offices in assisting these individuals. Social counselling is analysed as both an institutionalized policy intervention and a communicative practice focused on problem-solving. The paper highlights the power asymmetry between counsellor and advice-seeker stemming from the counsellor's superior knowledge of the welfare system, and German society. Social counselling acts as a means of support for individuals to navigate complex institutional arrangements and manage risks in modern society. However, the counsellor's authoritative role in shaping communication constitutes another dimension of power asymmetry. Faced with challenges such as complex legal regulations and limited resources, social counsellors emphasize the need for advice-seekers to gradually take responsibility for their own lives and interact with welfare institutions. This encouragement of self-sufficiency (orig. Ger. Selbstständigkeit) aligns with the principles of German workfare policies. Non-cooperation from advice-seekers in the context of social counselling can be therefore seen as a form of resistance against disciplinary power within the welfare state. The paper raises concerns about the long-term effectiveness and impact of social counselling, noting also the potential for burnout among social counsellors.

Tens of thousands of Romanian migrants work in the German construction sector. Their work is often characterized by unpaid wages, long workdays and by the withholding of sick or holiday payments. The risky and exploitative nature of the conditions under which Romanian migrants work on German construction sites is reflected in their negative evaluation of their engagements as “slave labor” by Romanian workers. Starting from such a clearly negative evaluation, the paper asks how Romanian construction workers in Germany classify their work and what role such classifications have within the context of labor exploitation. Based on qualitative interviews with and participant observation among Romanian construction site workers in Germany and in Romania, the article reconstructs four work classifications. Work may be interpreted as the fulfillment of obligations or as necessary for economic revenue; hard work itself can be a symbolic contribution to one’s own sense of identity or it can have the meaning of being part of everyday normalcy. Each of the work classifications offers a different reason to make hard work plausible in the eyes of the workers and employers actively turn such interpretations into a mechanism of vulnerability. Without direct physical coercion, these ideas motivate workers to take on work that they themselves criticize as ‘slave labor.’ The paper concludes by arguing that the recognition of such classifications and their social effects are crucial for an understanding of labor exploitation.

For decades, migrant workers with temporary and service contract work in the German meat industry have rarely been recruited by trade unions. The Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz (“Occupational Safety and Health Inspection Act”) law implemented in 2021 aimed to grant equal employment conditions to the majority of the workers in slaughterhouses, creating new avenues for trade unions to gain more members and organize industry-level negotiations for better wages and a collective agreement. This article explores the lessons we can draw from the series of strikes that accompanied the negotiations. By relying primarily on participant observation in the meat industry strikes and employing an actor-centred perspective on industrial relations, the paper reveals the role of shop-floor organic intellectuals in mobilizing and demobilizing workers. The analysis of the strikes shows that organic intellectuals can be instrumental in articulating the resistance of subaltern groups, but they can also be co-opted by dominant groups to manufacture consent.

Romania has been, for the past decade, not only the country with the highest in-work poverty among the European member states, but - unlike most European member states - also a country with a steadily growing welfare polarization of the working force. The paper aims to explain why, after more than a decade of fine-tuning of labor market, fiscal and social policies, Romania still finds itself in this situation. Despite constant improvements over the past 12 years in the welfare indicators of the overall employed population, the gap between employees and self-employed widened. The paper documents the increasing differences in exposure to poverty and social exclusion between the two segments of the employed population and points out to the mix of factors responsible for this development. Unlike most of the European countries, where a certain gap between employees and non-employees is the result of the flexibilization of the labour market, thus of the increase in atypical and non-standard employment forms, in Romania this appears to be rather the result of a mix between a unique inherited structure of employment and an inadequate package of social and fiscal measures, which kept and further pushed self-employed into informality. Thus, contrary to other European countries, which face the problem of how to better protect workers in new forms of employment, Romania is still searching for a policy solution that would allow for both the existing self-employed to become ‘visible’ in a formal economy and the diversification of employment forms. Finally, the paper explores the possibilities to reverse the current trend.

External and internal changes that affect non-governmental organizations and the difficulty to manage such situations are the main themes tackled by the author Lucian Sfetcu in his paper Introduction to the study of organizational change. The author studies, from this perspective, the Catalctica NGO, and proposes a method of analysing organisational changes applied to the NGO work model. The paradigm proposed by Lucian Sfetcu represents a guide for the non-governmental organizations from our country that face strong changes as a result of internal or external forces. The paper is welcome in a field so little studied in our country, specially in the actual political and economic context. In regards to future research directions, like the author of the book has stated, this paper represents only the foundation, comparative studied between NGOs from different fields, and from different regions from our country being necessary.

This paper analyses, from a semantic and pragmatic perspective, the meaning of an old Romanian phraseological unit a se duce la Cucuiata, thus providing insights into the archaic Romanian mentality and cultural patterns. Originating from the word cucui (bump), cucuiata was used to designate an elevated plot of land. The expression included, initially, a euphemistic reference to death, as archaic burial places were usually located on hills, and constituted a linguistic device mirroring the reluctance to deal with human mortality in an undeviating way. However, the connotations of the expression have changed in contemporary Romanian language, to refer to a secluded, distant place, far from civilization, often a symbol of lack of education and limited understanding of the world (pejorative meaning). To reveal the present-day uses of this word, the paper examines and interprets contexts taken from the virtual environment.

The responsibility to protect (R2P) is a relatively innovative, still emerging concept that entered the area of international public law a few years ago. After the international community failed to take action during the atrocities in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, due to various motives, the concept emerged as an alternative to extend one's protection over another, but also to state's protection that must be exercised over its own population. The norm seeks to never permit an outbreak of mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Under this norm, states fall under the obligation to exercise the protection that they can offer in order to assist the United Nations in establishing and settling peace and, simultaneously, accomplishing the protection of human rights. This paper seeks to elucidate the circumstances in which the application of the norm could be justified, as it may be subjected to abuses; its limits, considering the fact that an uncontrolled and vicious use may violate the principle of non-intervention, state's sovereignty and other international principles; but also, the controversies it triggers, oscillating between being a legal norm or a political principle.

This research gives an overview of the Vlach identity in southeast Albania within the pattern of self-designation. I try to identify identity aspects of the place and people under the influence of border and transnationalism, during communism and post-communism, and the transition from communism to a democratic system. I discuss how during the two systems the place and people developed a marginalized identity affected by the lack of the Center’s attention (Tirana) and by developing policies. In this paper, I debate about politics of identity and politics of assimilation relating to the Vlach minority in the county of Korça. Particular attention is given to Census Albania 2011 while I explain the assimilation politics of the Albanian state. Significant is the fact that I focused my study in my own country as part of anthropology at home, because I saw it worth utilizing the repertoire of being familiar with my own people’s culture, including also the acquaintances of language-Albanian and Romanian and with people of the area. The research was conducted in rural villages with a high presence of Vlach minority, in order to analyze inter-ethnic relations. The social research map targeted the village of Voskopoja, former Moscopole or Moscopolis as it is also a multiculturalist landmark affected by transnationalism and transmigration processes. In observing identity aspects, I employed a total experience, demanding my anthropological resources, intellectual, political, intuitive, native, and insiderness-outsiderness observation forms of knowledge. Had to measure the controlled information the locals delivered to me or to other researchers who had already produced texts about Vlachs.

This article aims to check the hypothesis that contemporary writers should be prone to multiculturalism and multilingualism in the context of redefining Weltliteratur, as well as the liaisons between languages and cultures. To this end, the paper surveys several non-fictional works by Romanian literary critic Gheorghe Grigurcu, listing and explaining several terms in Latin, French, English, and German that the author weaves within the text.

Surrealism, the last movement of the historical avant-garde, is tackled in this paper firstly from a general standpoint, including a brief history of what it signified at the world level, narrowing then down on the local occurrences, divided into two stages: before and after 1940. Telling for the aims of this paper is Gellu Naum’s statement: “I bear in me the profound sadness of poets who have struggled their entire life not to make literature and, in the end, after having skimmed through more than one hundred pages, realized that they made nothing but literature.” This is a resigned outcry of a generation: wishing (and attempting to accomplish) the death of literature, avant-garde writers, and especially Surrealists, only managed to give it extra life and vitality through their revolted writings.

In this brief paper, we focus on the monument of C. Memmius and its inscription in Ephesus in western Turkey. C. Memmius was the grandson of Sulla and was mentioned in the inscription of this Ephesian monument as the epigraph of the dedicatee. After discussing the monument’s function, dating and inscription from different perspectives, in the concluding part, we refer to the positive memory of Sulla in Asia Minor, especially in Ephesus.