Translations Galore

I recently aquired the Thomas Cleary translation of the Tao te Ching... which brought to mind the differences and difficulties in translation. Just to give an idea, here are several translations of the same passage (from Chapter 3):

Not putting high prices on hard-to-get goods causes the people not to steal.

—trans. Cleary

Not prizing property that is hard to come by will save them [the common people] from becoming thieves.

—trans. Ames and Hall

If the sage does not buy treasures then the people will not want to steal them.

—trans. Kwok, Palmer, and Ramsay

Not collecting treasure prevents stealing.

—trans. from online source

Prize no rarity, and men are freed from thievery.

—trans. from Douglas Allchin

By not setting high store on things difficult to obtain, he [the sage] prevents the people from becoming robbers.

—trans. from F.H. Balfour

Do not value rare treasure, so that people will not steal.

—trans. from Beck

If we cease to set store by products that are hard to get, there will be less outright thieves.

—trans. from Byrn

Okay, there are a ton more, but you get the idea. The thing that immediately struck me about Cleary's translation was that he uses "price" instead of "value". The value translation makes more sense, because the price itself is irrelevant if people do not place value on the object. So I started hunting through other translations, and Cleary's is the only one with this particular nuance. It almost implies the same meaning, since setting a high price generally indicates that SOMEone places high value on it, but I prefer the other translations in this instance.