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Shameless plug, the free Standard Ebooks edition of the Legge translation: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/laozi/tao-te-ching/james-l...
Your site has been one of my favorite finds of this decade. Thank you for the fantastic work.
Modern Chinese has a lot more multisyllable words than classical Chinese. That tends to narrow meanings.
It wasn't on the list, but this is my favorite translation: https://terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery.
A page about hair-splitting on translations of a philosophy whose chapter one paragraph one states the notion isn't possible to convey in words! The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the ma…
If the text is just too mystifying to “get into”, I highly recommend Red Pine’s (non-free) translation. It is not the most authoritative but he includes translations of commentary from centuries of Chinese scholars that shed a lot more light on each passage than you are likely to get without a more serious course of study.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C2WJQNM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...