Romanization schemes for Chinese are notoriously imperfect, if for no other reasons than that 4 tones -- 5 if you count a null tone sometimes used -- are not immediately obvious to those who do not have a speaking knowledge of any of the Chinese dialects.
Perhaps I am prejudiced, having learned Chinese primarily using texts that happened to (mostly) rely on the Pinyin system. However, it seems to me that Pinyin has the distinct merit of adhering most closely to the principles of most of the primary European languages (especially Spanish, Italian and other Romance languages) where vowel sounds are far more regular and predictable than they are in English, particularly.
I can't comment (yet) on this particular translation, though I am working through several other bilingual editions that are part of the same Foreign Language Press publication project, and can give a few early impressions based on what I've read so far.
These translations are commendable in that they seek to provide a full translation of the works in question, thereby attempting to avoid some of the cultural "hyperbole" that has been attached to some of these works by translators approaching the texts from outside the context of Chinese culture. As a native-born speaker of English, I did not begin studying Chinese until my late teens and will never have the complete understanding of the culture to argue persuasively over the finer points of these translations.
However, on the intuitive side, I do not a certain defensiveness at times and an effort to provide translations that are either culturally acceptable to present-day political realities in the Chinese mainland regions, or that may simply be dodging some of the tougher editorial calls to be made.
It is very clear, especially in some of the introductory matter that accompanies many texts in this series, that the final English version was approved by someone not a native speaker of idiomatic English. In most cases, the evidence appears in simple errors of literal translation of phrases that make perfect idiomatic sense in Chinese, but, rendered with too much literal faithfulness, are puzzling to say the least when they are rendered in English.
I would agree with others who've commented that these texts are probably best for someone whose knowledge of Chinese is limited and is looking for an English "crib sheet" for entering into the Chinese originals (or in some cases, modern Chinese renditions of Classical Chinese texts, as in FLP's 2 volume translation of the works of Zhuangzi). Note, however, that the FLP translation of Zhuangzi is (unless I'm mistaken) the most complete translation presently available in English, and this is true of many other texts in the FLP's publishing project).
As a student of Chinese language, I really don't care much what romanization method is used. They are all far from ideal. What I care about is that someone is making these texts available in English, even if the translations are not always the most poetic -- where poetry is called for.
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