《衛靈公》 Passage 15.26

the Master said

• 子 Master, teacher (honorific title for Confucius)
• 曰 to say, speak

I, me

still, even in my own day

Lau and Chin render the same temporal-reach sense idiomatically as 'old enough to have...'

to reach, live to see, catch in time for

scribe, recorder, historian

attributive/possessive particle: 's, of

most translators restructure the clause so this genitive link is not carried by a separate word

a gap or blank space left in a text, where a scribe was uncertain how to write a character

• 闕 gap, blank space; left out, omitted — Lau reads this as 'deficient, lacking refinement' rather than a textual gap
• 文 writing, text — Lau reads this as 'refinement' (culture, polish) rather than 'text'

most translators read 闕文 as a textual lacuna scribes left blank when unsure; Lau instead reads it as scribes 'lacking refinement,' a real interpretive divergence.

pausal particle marking the end of a clause

to have, own, possess

horse

nominalizing particle: one who, those who

to lend, loan out

Lau and Chin paraphrase as permitting or delegating use rather than literal lending, but express the same underlying act.

another person, someone else

to ride, to drive (a horse or vehicle)

it, referring to the horse (object pronoun)

now, nowadays

gone, lost

亡 here stands for 無 and is read wú, 'there is no longer any such thing' (楊伯峻: 亡, 同無); not 'perished'.

perfective particle + exclamatory final particle: alas, indeed

• 矣 particle marking completed state
• 夫 sentence-final exclamatory particle: alas!

translators render the combined force variously as reportage (alas), a hedge (I am afraid, I suppose), or even a rhetorical question (Watson); several drop it entirely.