确实，好多EPA法规里面有些很类似的词汇，想要准确翻译不容易，但是要我去研究法律英语也不太显示，不过happy说的一些东西让我对英语在法律方面的措辞大概有了个概念。有些词汇，可能就想happy所说，有些英语的专业词汇，很难在中文中找到一个意思完全匹配的词。

以后遇到这种情况,楼主可以去相应的网站上搜索一下,看有没有什么解释.比如regulation这个词,EPA网站上有这么一段,是介绍EPA如何制订regulations的:
http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/brochure/origins.html

Environmental Laws: The Origin of Regulations
从标题就可以看出:先有laws再有regulations,regulations来源于laws.

Typically, Congress writes legislation about an environmental or public health protection issue before EPA writes any regulations to address it. Public interest groups, citizens, businesses, or other government agencies contact Congress with an issue of concern. Congress may then decide to hold hearings and prepare a bill. If the bill gains approval in Congress, it then goes to the President for signature. If signed, the bill becomes a law.
再看第一段:当公众利益集团/公民/企业/或其它政府机构就某一关注问题同国会联系后,国会就会举行听证,然后制定议案.国会通过议案后,再经总统签字允许,就成为法律.

Through the years, Congress has passed and Presidents have signed numerous laws to protect human health and the environment. These laws give EPA most of its authority to write regulations, and serve as the foundation for achieving the nation's environmental and public health protection goals. However, most laws do not have enough detail to be put into practice right away. EPA is called a regulatory agency because Congress authorizes us to write regulations that explain the critical technical, operational, and legal details necessary to implement laws.
再看第二段:大部分法律并没有给出足够的细节,无法立即执行.因此,国会授权EPA颁布regulations,以解释执行这些法律所必需的关键技术/操作和法律细节.

在法律专业的词典上搜索了一下,再看了些相关文献,先确定了act,action和regulation的意思.(最终还要以法律专业人员的解释为准.不过从网上搜索的结果来看,有些法律专业的人翻译也不是很规范,中文跟英文不对应.)

Act-法案。在美国，act是指由国会通过、总统签字的法律或待批准成为法律的议案（当然最后也很可能不被批准）。

示例：
美国《2005能源政策法案》－US Energy Policy Act of 2005


以下信息供参考:
1) n. in general, any action by a person. 2) n. a statutory plan passed by Congress or any legislature which is a "bill" until enacted and becomes law. 3) v. for a court to make a decision and rule on a motion or petition, as in "the court will act on your motion for a new trial."
In the legal sense, this word may be used to signify the result of a public deliberation, the decision of a prince, of a legislative body, of a council, court of justice, or a magistrate. Also, a decree, edict, law, judgment, resolve, award, determination. Also, an instrument in writing to verify facts, as act of assembly, act of congress, act of parliament, act and deed. Acts are civil or criminal, lawful or unlawful, public or private.
Public acts, usually denominated authentic, are those which have a public authority, and which have been made before public officers, are authorized by a public seal, have been made public by the authority of a magistrate, or which have been extracted and been properly authenticated from public records.
Acts under private signature are those which have been made by private individuals, under their hands. An act of this kind does not acquire the force of an authentic act, by being registered in the office of a notary; unless it has been properly acknowledged before the officer, by the parties to it.
Private acts are those made by private persons, as registers in relation to their receipts and expenditures, schedules, acquittances, and the like.
Acts are general or special; public or private. A general or public act is a universal rule which binds the whole community; of which the courts are bound to take notice ex officio.
Private or special acts are rather exceptions, than rules; being those which operate only upon particular persons and private concerns; of these the courts are not bound to take notice, unless they are pleaded. Com. 85, 6; 1 Bouv. Inst. n. 105.

Action-诉讼。诉讼可分为刑事诉讼（criminal proceedings）和民事诉讼（civil lawsuits）（注意：lawsuit尤指民事案件，所以前面的刑事诉讼用proceedings）.action这个词多用于民事诉讼。

以下信息供参考:
Action: a lawsuit in which one party (or parties) sues another.
The term action includes all the proceedings attendant upon a legal demand, its adjudication, and its denial or its enforcement by a court. Specifically, it is the legal proceedings, while a Cause of Action is the underlying right that gives rise to them. In casual conversation, action and cause of action may be used interchangeably, but they are more properly distinguished. At one time, it was more correct to speak of actions at law and of proceedings or suits in Equity. The distinction is rather technical, however, and not significant since the merger of law and equity. The term action is used more often for civil lawsuits than for criminal proceedings.
Actions are divided into criminal and civil. A criminal action is a prosecution in a court of justice in the name of the government, against one or more individuals accused of a crime. A civil action is a legal demand of one's right, or it is the form given by law for the recovery of that which is due.
Actions are also divided into those which are local and such as are transitory.

Regulation-可译为“规章”。是由受认可的行政机构颁布的对法律进行解释和补充的文件。从理论上说，它不是由立法机构颁布的，不具有法律效力；但从事实上讲，它对判定某种行为是否合法有重要影响，因此实际上它是具有法律效力的。比如美国国会通过的《食品、药品和化妆品法》中规定：禁止不安全食品和无效药品进入市场。但到底什么是“不安全”、什么是“无效”呢？这就由美国国会下属的美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）颁布文件来解释说明，这就是regulation。

示例：《联邦规章典》－Code of Federal Regulations（C.F.R)





以下信息供参考:
A rule of order having the force of law, prescribed by a superior or competent authority, relating to the actions of those under the authority's control.
Regulations are issued by various federal government departments and agencies to carry out the intent of legislation enacted by Congress. Administrative agencies, often called "the bureaucracy," perform a number of different government functions, including rule making. The rules issued by these agencies are called regulations and are designed to guide the activity of those regulated by the agency and also the activity of the agency's employees. Regulations also function to ensure uniform application of the law.
Administrative agencies began as part of the Executive Branch of government and were designed to carry out the law and the president's policies. Congress, however, retains primary control over the organization of the bureaucracy, including the power to create and eliminate agencies and confirm presidential nominations for staffing the agencies. Congress has also created administrative agencies that exist outside of the executive branch and are independent of presidential control. President franklin d. roosevelt and the New Deal plan he implemented created many new administrative agencies. Over the years administrative agencies have become more powerful participants in the overall federal government structure as Congress and the president have delegated more legislative and executive duties to them. Administrative agencies have also become responsible for many judicial functions.
The judicial and legislative functions of administrative agencies are not exactly like those of the courts or the legislature, but they are similar. Because regulations are not the work of the legislature, they do not have the effect of law in theory; but in practice, regulations can have an important effect in determining the outcome of cases involving regulatory activity. Much of the legislative power vested in administrative agencies comes from the fact that Congress can only go so far in enacting legislation or establishing guidelines for the agencies to follow. Language that is intrinsically vague and cannot speak for every factual situation to which it is applied, as well as political factors, dictate that the agencies have much to interpret and decide in enforcing legislation. For example, Securities laws prohibit insiders from profiting against the public interest, but it is left to the applicable Administrative Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, to define "public interest." The Food and Drug Administration, another administrative agency, must keep unsafe food and ineffective drug products off the market, but further administrative refinement and interpretation is necessary for the agency to determine what products are "unsafe" or "ineffective." The Federal Communications Commission must interpret laws regulating broadcasting; the Treasury Department issues regulations interpreting the Internal Revenue Code; and the Board of Governors of the federal reserve System issues regulations governing the actions of Federal Reserve banks. The many other administrative agencies and departments make regulations to provide clarity and guidance in their respective areas of the law.
Administrative agencies carry out legislation in several ways, including enacting regulations to carry out what the agency believes is the legislative intent. Agencies generally formulate proposed regulations and then open up rule-making proceedings in which interested parties can testify and comment on them. The agency then issues a rule or policy that binds the agency in future cases just as statutory law does.
The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, 5 U.S.C.A. § 551 et seq., with its subsequent amendments, was designed to make administrative agencies accountable for their rule making and other government functions. It imposed a number of procedural requirements designed to make procedures among agencies more uniform. In administrative rule-making proceedings formal hearings must be held, interested parties must be given the opportunity to comment on proposed rules, and the adopted formal rules must be published in the Federal Register. After being published in the Federal Register, the regulations are subsequently arranged by subject in the Code of Federal Regulations. The Administrative Procedure Act has been criticized, however, because it contains a number of exemptions that allow the agencies discretion in whether or not they strictly adhere to the guidelines established in the act. Organizations such as the American Bar Association are working toward eliminating such discretion in administrative agencies.

code
法典
codes是指涉及某方面的一系列法律，这些法律都有编号。并不是所有的法律都有编号，而有些code尽管是由管理机构而非国会颁布的，实际上并非法令或法律，但同样具有法律效力。

示例：
《美国法典》－U.S. Code（U.S.C.)
《军事审判法典》－Code of Military Justice


参考以下信息：
code n. a collection of written laws gathered together, usually covering specific subject matter. Thus, a state may have a civil code, corporations code, education code, evidence code, health and safety codes, insurance code, labor code, motor vehicle code, penal code, revenue and taxation code, and so forth. Federal statutes which deal with legal matters are grouped together in codes. There are also statutes which are not codified. Despite their apparent permanence codes are constantly being amended by legislative bodies. Some codes are administrative and have the force of law even though they were created and adopted by regulatory agencies and are not actually statutes or laws.

Statute
法律条文。是由州或联邦通过的法律中的条文。它首先是作为一项议案被立法者提出或发起，经众议院（注：英国的国会分为上议院House of Lords和下议院House of Commons，美国的国会分为参议院Senate和众议院House of Representatives。House of Representatives可简写为House。）和立法机构都批准后，由执行官（对于联邦来说是总统，对各州来说是州长）签字批准后成为法律。当一个议案上升为法律后，其中的条文（provisions）就称为statutes。各州的statutes和联邦的statutes按主题汇编起来，称为法典（code）。这些法典以书籍的形式颁布，在法律方面的图书馆里都可以找到。

参考以下信息：
A statute is a written law passed by a legislature on the state or federal level. Statutes set forth general propositions of law that courts apply to specific situations. A statute may forbid a certain act, direct a certain act, make a declaration, or set forth governmental mechanisms to aid society.

A statute begins as a bill proposed or sponsored by a legislator. If the bill survives the legislative committee process and is approved by both houses of the legislature, the bill becomes law when it is signed by the executive officer (the president on the federal level or the governor on the state level). When a bill becomes law, the various provisions in the bill are called statutes. The term statute signifies the elevation of a bill from legislative proposal to law. State and federal statutes are compiled in statutory codes that group the statutes by subject. These codes are published in book form and are available at law libraries.

Lawmaking powers are vested chiefly in elected officials in the legislative branch. The vesting of the chief lawmaking power in elected lawmakers is the foundation of a representative democracy. Aside from the federal and state constitutions, statutes passed by elected lawmakers are the first laws to consult in finding the law that applies to a case.

The power of statutes over other forms of laws is not complete, however. Under the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions, federal and state governments are comprised of a system of checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. As the system of checks and balances plays out, the executive and judicial branches have the opportunity to fashion laws within certain limits. The Executive Branch may possess certain lawmaking powers under the federal or state constitutions, and the judiciary has the power to review statutes to determine whether they are valid under those constitutions. When a court strikes down a statute, it in effect creates a law of its own that applies to the general public.

Laws created through judicial opinion stand in contradistinction to laws created in statutes. Case law has the same legally binding effect as statutory law, but there are important distinctions between statutes and case law. Case law is written by judges, not by elected lawmakers, and it is written in response to a specific case before the court. A judicial opinion may be used as precedent for similar cases, however. This means that the judicial opinion in the case will guide the result in similar cases. In this sense a judicial opinion can constitute the law on certain issues within a particular jurisdiction. Courts can establish law in this way when no statute exists to govern a case, or when the court interprets a statute.

For example, if an appeals court holds that witness testimony on memory recovered through therapy is not admissible at trial, that decision will become the rule for similar cases within the appeals court's jurisdiction. The decision will remain law until the court reverses itself or is reversed by a higher court, or until the state or federal legislature passes a statute that overrides the judicial decision. If the courts strike down a statute and the legislature passes a similar statute, the courts may have an opportunity to declare the new statute unconstitutional. This cycle can be repeated over and over if legislatures continually test the constitutional limits on their lawmaking powers.

Judicial opinions also provide legal authority in cases that are not covered by statute. Legislatures have not passed statutes that govern every conceivable dispute. Furthermore, the language contained in statutes does not cover every possible situation. Statutes may be written in broad terms, and judicial opinions must interpret the language of relevant statutes according to the facts of the case at hand. Regulations passed by administrative agencies also fill in statutory gaps, and courts occasionally are called on to interpret regulations as well as statutes.

Courts tend to follow a few general rules in determining the meaning or scope of a statute. If a statute does not provide satisfactory definitions of ambiguous terms, courts must interpret the words or phrases according to ordinary rules of grammar and dictionary definitions. If a word or phrase is technical or legal, it is interpreted within the context of the statute. For example, the term interest can refer to a monetary charge or ownership of property. If the term interest appears in the context of a statute on real estate ownership, a court will construe the word to mean property ownership. Previous interpretations of similar statutes are also helpful in determining a statute's meaning.

Statutes are not static and irreversible. A statute may be changed or repealed by the lawmaking body that enacted it, or it may be overturned by a court. A statute may lapse, or terminate, under the terms of the statute itself or under legislative rules that automatically terminate statutes unless they are reapproved before a certain amount of time has passed.

Although most legal disputes are covered at least in part by statutes, tort and contract disputes are exceptions, in that they are largely governed by case law. Criminal Law, patent law, tax law, Property Law, and Bankruptcy law are among the areas of law that are covered first and foremost by statute.

ACTION主要表示动作类型的，
ISSUE是签订
RULE是规则
REGULATION规例