The paper deals with philosophical problem of term-notion dichotomy. Linguo-semiotic analysis based on discourse community classification and discursive practices helps to distinguish notions and terms. Pragmatics, text type, genres and discourse community very often make a translator transfer terms into notions during the process of translation. Translation of terms by notions differs from translation of terms by terms, because it needs also interpretation. A translator transfers not only terms and lexical units but discourses.