周知，在攻读外文（如英文）学术著作时，经常会遇到一些难词、难句，如果不能正确理解它们就造成对原著的曲解甚至误解，给读者造成困惑。我认为，在这种时候翻译可以派上用场。 因为，就英语而言，一篇论文、或一节、一章（学术著作）文字，在将其译成汉语时译者首先就要“精确地理解原文”，舍此无法进行后续的翻译工作；而“精确地理解原文”谈何容易，中文、英文分属不同语系差别巨大，加之文化沿革各有不同，这给以中文为母语的读者阅读、欣赏英文学术文献带来了巨大困难。
翻译的标准不止一种，而我国的翻译历史也源远流长。从盛唐的唐三藏法师天竺国取经归唐后大规模翻译佛经始（有官方支持），到清末严复先生翻译《天演论》，乃至民国初年的大量引进西方科学、经济学、哲学、文学著作（有不少是借助于日文译著完成的），我国在“外译汉”方面取得了很大成绩，但也遗留下一些问题；在我看来，最突出的问题就是缺乏一种能够让大家都信服的翻译理论。 是“信达雅”（严复）还是“神似重于形似”，是“直译”还是“意译”，是“白话为常，文言应变”（余光中），还是原文与译文“平起平坐”（董桥）……，不一而足！ 1969年，美国语言学家尤金·奈达（Eugene A. Nida）提出了“动态对等”（或“功能对等”）翻译理论，恰似石破天惊！因其考虑周全，处理细致得当而得到当代语言学界及翻译家们的公认。凡关心翻译理论与实践之人皆不可不察也！
现以“动态对等”翻译理论为指导，提供几个译例供大家参考。
以下这段文字的英语原文取自哈罗德·杰弗里所著《Scientific Inference》第9章第12节:
9.12. The theories of Russell and Whitehead. Bertrand Russell, in Mysticism and Logic(I9I7), tries to tackle the problem of actually defining objects in terms, not exactly of sensations, but of sense data, which are effectively sensations with the errors of observation removed. A physical object still cannot be adequately defined as the class of those sensations that, in ordinary language, would be said to be perceptions of it; for then the object would change when new aspects of it were observed, and this is not to be allowed. Therefore he considers the object defined in terms of all possible aspects of it; these aspects are called sensibilia, and resemble sense data in everything except that the majority of them are not perceived. An object is then a class of sensibilia.
From the Practical scientific standpoint the weakness of this attitude is that we do not know what the sensibilia are like. An object, on this theory, could never be described until we had knowledge, by experience, of all its aspects, perceived and unperceived, and this is inherently contradictory. Even the perceived sensibilia, or sense data, cannot be described in terms of sensations until we have some rule for removing the errors of observation. The unperceived ones are necessarily never known directly, but have to be inferred froin the Perceived ones; and this can be done only by using the laws of physics, Interming properties of the object, and then proceeding to the unperceived sensibilia. The Physical object and the laws of physics are anterior in knowledge to the sensibilia, and Russell's theory, whether it is logically consistent or not, is not a theory of scientifc knowledge.
I should say that in Human Knowledge Russell does not mention sense data and has presumably abandoned this theory. However, the theory and the objection to it are interesting because they bring out the point that in a theory of knowledge we must proceed from the better known to the less known, and a theory that reverses this process is not a theory of knowledge
In Professor Whitehead's theory events, instead of sensibilia, are the fundamental entities. Each event contains other events, so that we can specify sequences of events such that each event in asequence contains all after it. The limit of such a sequence is a point-event and it is to such point-events that the laws of physics are supposed to apply. But the notion of a limit implies an infinite sequence, and an infinite class of observations is impossible in practice
其汉语译文如下，请读者品味看它是否达到了“动态对等”？
9.12. 罗素和怀特海的理论。罗素在《神秘主义与逻辑》（1917）一书中，试图解决定义实体的难题，其作法是不照搬感觉要素组合，而是利用感觉材料（即去除了观测误差的感觉要素组合）来定义实体。一个物理实体仍然不能被适当地定义为关于它的感觉要素的类，因为在日常语言中这会被说成是对它的感知；如果关于该实体有新的发现，则它就会有所变化，而这是不允许的。因而，罗素考虑将该实体的方方面面都予以定义，这些方方面面就称为“可感物”（sensibilia），而可感物除了大部分尚未被人们亲知外，它们都能在各方面类似感觉材料。现在个实体就成了可感物的类。
从科学的观点看，罗素理论的不足之处在于，实际上我们不知道可感物为何物。根据罗素的理论，一个实体除非人们通过经验对它的方方面面获得了知识（无论亲知亲为或以间接的方式），否则不能对它作出定义。这本身就存有内在的矛盾。即使是亲知的可感物即感觉材料，在利用某种规则消除观测误差之前，也不能利用感觉要素组合来定义它。对非亲知的可感物更无从谈起直接获得关于它的知识，而必须经由已亲知的可感物推出这种知识；对可感物的亲知只有利用物理学定律才能办到，只有在此基础上才能得到未亲知可感物的知识。关于物理实体及其物理定律的知识均先于可感物，所以罗素的理论无论在逻辑上是否自洽（consistent），都不是关于科学知识的理论。
应该指出，在《人类知识》这本书中罗素未提及感觉材料，他自行放弃了这种理论。然而这个理论及其对它的反对意见都非常令人感兴趣，因为它把一个关键之点凸现了出来，即对任何关于知识的理论而言，人们必须利用已知去推断未知，而不是相反，逆此过程去构造知识的理论是行不通的。 在怀特海教授的理论中，是事件而非可感物构成了基本实体（the fundamental entities）。每一事件包含其它事件，所以可以确定事件序列，使序列中的每一事件都包含它后面的所有事件。这种序列的极限是一个点事件（point event），物理学定律就是应用于这些点事件的。但是，极限的概念示意存在一个无穷序列，而在实践中不可能有这样的无穷集合。
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