Stephen Mitchell's translation of the long-dead Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu was first brought up by my good friend Tim. He said he wanted to read it. Yet I didn't pick it up until I read glowing reviews on this site about it. Now after reading it, I'll tell Tim there are better translations such as the first one I read, but can't remember whose translation it was. (I found it online, though.) Why? Because I wasn't spellbound by the mysteriousness of Lao Tsu. Mitchell's attempt to convey the essence of each poem, or 'chapters' as he calls them, did not work for me. I drifted away to other books and finally forced myself to finish it.

Mitchell's English translation rewords and edits or 'improvises' the poems in order to make them less mysterious, actually. Then in the Notes following the 81 'chapters', we see parts of the 'original text' in English, which is confusing since it was written in Chinese originally.
These notes should have been with each poem, in my opinion, so you don't have to flip the pages all the time and lose your place...and patience. They are sometimes helpful, but sometimes confusing and irritating. Take the notes on Chapter 25, for example: These are the four great powers: Ho-hum. Another flip example is in the notes for Chapter 42: The Tao gives birth to One...One gives birth to Two: Oy! Two gives birth to Three: Where will it end? Three gives birth to all things: knew it! Now once more from the top, with feeling.

Now reading the Tao te Ching is not supposed to be a fun thing to do and Mitchell's flippancy is surprising and not helpful at all. To his credit, I still got quite a bit out of the wisdom of following the Tao in spite of his translation and I will keep wondering about some of his notes where he may quote Zen masters or say something enigmatic like the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, in moral judgments, is the Tree of Death.
His translation is a mixture of the serious in the poems and the obscure and crazy in the Notes section. Probably for a beginner in Taoist wisdom, the poems will be interesting, but the Notes will not. My opinion is that with all his experience of writing and study of the Tao, he could've done better.

Recommended: Yes