Why does Roland Barthes’s “Rhetorique de l’Image” read so much better in French than in English?  “Ecremer” sounds better than “skim off”, “italianite” sounds better than “Italianicity.”  The emphasis of “comme si”  in the discussion of the image in the Panzani advertisement conveying the idea of a complete meal, has an especially gallic ring to it that cannot quite be translated adequately by “as if.”   An interesting note:  in the original French version Barthes translates “still life” as “still living.”