This is not that much of problem for a casual piece of text but for something that has much more potential impact, it's huge.
Translating laws or perhaps the constitution of a country can all but change it. Religious or spiritual texts too have this problem.
That's not simply a function of translation between languages; some of the ideas in religious texts resist even translation into language. In the Buddhist tradition I used to be involved with, I was told that only texts with a continuous practice lineage reaching back to the author can be relied on, and even then, only if you have a teacher who has practiced in that lineage.
Accordingly, none of the sutras were considered reliable. Interesting, engaging, even beautiful, sure; but if the lineage is lost, then nobody can be sure what they mean. Texts by more recent authors, from whom there is still a living practice lineage, were preferred.
The problem with teachers or detailed commentaries, is that they may not agree with each others, or could be too narrow or even wrong: as as student looking for knowledge, you wouldn't be able to distinguish valuable interpretations from limited ones.
I think it might be judicious to look as ambiguity more as a feature than as a bug. Classical Chinese authors seems to have purposefully relied on it for example.
Otoh, even in cases where this is strictly held (eg. Islam), there at strong traditions which explicitly regard this as a feature (eg. Disagreements between scholars is a blessing to the common man) and a system of the strong positions and dispensations for many legal positions have been codified.
Knowledge is a double edged sword: once you know about something, discovering new viewpoints about that thing becomes difficult. "子" (son, child, small thing, seed) is a respectful suffix in Chinese (e.g. 老子 (Laozi), 孔子 (Confucius), 天子[0]).
> and a system of the strong positions and dispensations for many legal positions have been codified.
Out of curiosity, do you mean that well-known disagreements among scholars have structured the legal system in essentially-Islamic regions?
I'm not sure about legal systems but the religion itself has several positions on many questions. The way this happens is that 2 or more qualified scholars disagree on a ruling based on their reading and analysis of primary texts. This results in two or more rulings. Sometimes, they're equally valid and this more or less created the 4 schools of practice in Sunni Islam. Sometimes, even within a school, there are differences of opinion. The distinctions are usually minor but for someone who is observant, it gives them options when following the stronger position is exceedingly difficult. The technical term for this is a Rukhsa (dispensation) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rukhsa
I have heard something about the Jewish history of making these kinds of interpretations to "work around" scriptural laws. I think it was in a book by Israel Shahak where I first came across it.
In any case, yes. Precedent is important and even though it's not fully reliable, we will usually have a lot of stuff that cancels out errors.