By the way, I didn’t want to get too lost in philosophy before. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the translation : - ) For me all the given translations missed some meaning, and they also missed some poetry in English.
Your favourite was:
“Heaven and earth start with no name. The named is the mother of everything under the sun.”
Which is good. But at first I didn’t like the use of the word “start” and “everything under the sun”. “Start” feels abrupt. And “everything under the sun” carries connotations in English of “too much” to my ear.
I attempted an interpretation of my own, using “in the beginning” instead of the more abrupt “start”, and “the multitude of things” instead of the slightly negative to my ear “everything under the sun”:
Heaven and Earth in the beginning have no name. Name is mother to the multitude of things.
But then I wanted the rhyme too!
No name have heaven and Earth at first. Name, all things brings.
So rhyming Earth and birth instead of di and chi. And thing and bring instead of wu and mu.
Or:
Nameless are heaven and Earth at first. Name to the other is mother.
Rhyming Earth and first instead of di and chi. And other and mother instead of wu and mu, to bring back the “mother” theme again.
Just games. But the attempt to capture multiple structures at once, both the meaning, and the rhyme, made me think translation is a good example of the underlying point, that you can have multiple structures in the same thing. And need to be able to structure them in different ways to get the full meaning!