Up to this point the poet has been describing the fate of Jerusalem as though he were an observer. Now he speaks in the first person of himself and his sorrow for what has happened. Because of the change of pronouns to first person in verses 11-12, Bible en français courant separates these verses with an asterisk from those before and after it. See comment on 1.17.
My eyes are spent with weeping: that is, “My eyes are worn out with weeping” (Good News Translation). This half-line is matched by my soul is in tumult, which is literally “my intestines are fermenting.” New English Bible tries to keep the Hebrew image with “My bowels writhe in anguish.” See comments on 1.20.
My heart is poured out in grief is literally “my liver is poured out on the ground.” The Revised Standard Version footnote shows that it has changed the Hebrew for “on the ground” to in grief. Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation are simply expressing this idiom in English terms, and translators will want to do the same in the forms of their own languages.
Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people: daughter of my people refers again to the people of Jerusalem. In many languages this half-line will have to be adjusted to say, for example, “because the enemy has killed my people” or “… the people of Jerusalem.”
Because infants and babes faint: Revised Standard Version translates the final unit as a second cause for the grief referred to in the second unit. However, it is better to treat this as a separate statement, as in Good News Translation, or to make it coordinate with the previous clause; for example, “and infants and babies are….” The cause of the children’s fainting is their lack of food and drink, which is expressed at the beginning of verse 12. It may help the reader to shift the cause in verse 12 earlier to verse 11 and say, for example, “Because they have nothing to eat or drink, children and babies are fainting in the streets.” If hunger and thirst are introduced in verse 11, they need not be repeated in verse 12.
Infants here refers to children of both sexes, probably below the age of puberty. Babes refers to children who are being breast-fed, also of both sexes. Languages differ greatly in the way they classify children. However, the distinctions given above should be sufficient to assist translators in the selection of appropriate terms in their own languages.
Faint in the streets of the city: faint translates a different word than that used in 1.13 and 1.22, but the meaning is the same: “to be weak,” and particularly in this context, “dying of starvation.” In 1.20 the expression “in the street” translates the Hebrew for “outside, outdoors.” Here in the streets translates a word meaning “wide place” and probably refers to market areas or the city gate area where people gathered, or as New Jerusalem Bible says, “in the squares of the city.” Most translators prefer something like “in the streets of the city.” In those areas where there are no “city streets,” it may be better to say, for example, “outside” or “outside where people gather.”
Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on Lamentations. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .