《乌合之众·第二编·群体的意见与信念·群体意见的直接因素》第4节
If any particular language be studied, it is seen that the words of which it is composed change rather slowly in the course of ages, while the images these words evoke or the meaning attached to them changes ceaselessly. This is the reason why, in another work, I have arrived at the conclusion that the absolute translation of a language, especially of a dead language, is totally impossible. What do we do in reality when we substitute a French for a Latin, Greek, or Sanscrit expression, or even when we endeavour to understand a book written in our own tongue two or three centuries back? We merely put the images and ideas with which modern life has endowed our intelligence in the place of absolutely distinct notions and images which ancient life had brought into being in the mind of races submitted to conditions of existence having no analogy with our own. When the men of the Revolution imagined they were copying the Greeks and Romans, what were they doing except giving to ancient words a sense the latter had never had? What resemblance can possibly exist between the institutions of the Greeks and those designated to-day by corresponding words? A republic at that epoch was an essentially aristocratic institution, formed of a reunion of petty despots ruling over a crowd of slaves kept in the most absolute subjection. These communal aristocracies, based on slavery, could not have existed for a moment without it.
注释摘要
勒庞在这一段里展开了他关于词语力量的核心论证：词语本身的形式变化很慢，但它们所唤起的意象、所承载的意义却在不停地漂移。他用这一点来解释，为什么真正意义上的“绝对翻译”是不可能的——当你用一个现代法文词去替代一个古希腊文或拉丁文词，或者试图理解两百年前自己母语写成的书，你其实是用当代生活赋予你的意象，替换了那些早已亡故的种族在截然不同的生存条件下形成的观念。…