translation of these kind of texts is like translation of poetry: its pretty much linguistic rape. it actually goes for all philosophy as well, save for the analytical variety perhaps.
i followed a course at my university on chinese philosophy given by a professor in sinology, but unfortunately she lacked a deeper philosophical background. i also followed a course specifically on taoism, and that was the other way around :/ though she had been studying chinese for quite a few years though, if i remember correctly
chinese philosophy generally has two major themes: the correct naming of things and the correct ways of living. while philosophers usually place more emphasis on one or the other, they are also always intertwined. so its either 'the correct naming of things leads to the correct way of living', or the other way around. their whole philosophy is very linguistically oriented; they place great power in words and meanings as the ordering principle of society.
Taoism stresses the not-doing, the non-action, the non-being of things. while the words delineate things, order things, one has to keep his eyes open to their non-being what they are. they are grounded in a boundless alterity, and are thus always open to this 'nothing'. thus by non-doing, we can let the essence of things speak themselves.
as westerners, we will never completely comprehend their philosophy as they do, even when we would learn the language. certain things, unspeakable nuances, always get lost. not to mention that the meaning of the texts changes alongside with how their language and culture develops. Heidegger, who had extensive contacts with the oriental world, and indeed seemed to share a quite a few similarities in his philosophy of Being with the above, wrote a few great insights about this problem of irreducability in his philosophy of language.
though definitely also differing, i also found a theme closely related to this in the writings of the relatively accessable medieval christian mystic Meister Eckhart. especially his sermon on the highest value of disinterest.