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Re:Tao Te Ching by z2 on Thursday September 28, 2023 @03:51PM (#37694859)
Not to make it sound hopeless, but Old Chinese is lossy and thus perhaps unknowable vs any written vernacular language, because it tended to favor conciseness at the expense of ambiguity. There is no total as a bit of subjective interpretation is required.

持而盈之 for instance is "持=hold 而=yet 盈=overflow 之=[implied subject or this]" while the translator decided to add a cup, writing "Holding a cup and overfilling it." It's a great assumption as 盈 has the etymology of a vessel being filled, but still an assumption nonetheless.

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