Why dharma is difficult to translate
Duty, law, righteousness, nature, way. Each English word captures part of it and misleads about the rest.
Translators of dharma face a structural problem, not a vocabulary one. English separates what a thing is from what a person ought to do. Dharma does not: it holds the nature of a thing and the conduct proper to it in the same word.
So 'duty' imports an external obligation that the Sanskrit does not require, and 'nature' drops the obligation entirely. The usual compromise — leaving the word untranslated — is not laziness. It is an admission that the concept has no receptacle waiting for it.
The practical consequence for a knowledge platform is that the entry for dharma cannot open with a definition. It has to open with the shape of the difficulty, then give the readings in their own terms.