Tao Te Ching

I am always skeptical about translating the Tao Te Ching. Classical Chinese is very flexible (much more so than modern Chinese), and when the prose of a text is both dense and poetic, like that of the Tao Te Ching, it is impossible to retain most of the possible meanings of the text in a translation. To see this, just look at the following translations of the first two lines of the Tao Te Ching (name of the translator in brackets):

The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao;
The Names that can be given are not Absolute Names. (Lin Yutang)

The Way as “way” bespeaks no common lasting Way,
The name as “name” no common lasting name. (Moss Roberts)

The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao.
The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name. (James Legge)

To guide what can be guided is not constant guiding.
To name what can be named is not constant naming. (Chad Hansen)

Ways can be guided; they are not fixed ways.
Names can be named; they are not fixed names. (Chad Hansen, a different translation)

The problem is not that these are incorrect translations, but that each of them at best captures only one of the possible meanings of the original.