Not to make it sound hopeless, but Old Chinese is lossy because it tended to favor conciseness at the expense of unambiguous clarity. There is no total truth an

Not to make it sound hopeless, but Old Chinese is lossy because it tended to favor conciseness at the expense of unambiguous clarity. There is no total truth and 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.