More specifically, I am trying to make a midi controller for a Machinedrum. The MIDI CCs for knobs 1-8 are always the same, but for example, knob 4 on one machine could be decay, and knob 4 on another machine could be attack.

What I'd like, is to be able to update the text on the live.dials 1-8 to say the actual parameter name. I was thinking of having a menu, were you would select what the machine type is, and that would trigger each live.dial to update it's text to the corresponding parameter for that machine. This way when I go into abletons clip modulation, I would see "attack" instead of "knob 4"

I do not think you can change the names of live dials on the fly. I don't know the MD but I think the easiest way might be to use a bpatcher and have banks of 8 dials, one bank for each machine - all the dials labelled correctly for that machine, and then use a button the name of the machine to jump to bank of dials in the bpatcher. Look at bpatcher help file and double click the more patcher box to see what I am talking about.