In Greek the subject of the verbs went and told is not clear. It could be taken in an impersonal sense, “people went to John and told him.” However, it seems better to take it as referring back to some of John’s disciples.
Teacher (literally “Rabbi”) is the same word of address used of Jesus in 1.38.
You remember the man who was with you on the east side of the Jordan is literally “he who was with you on the other side of the Jordan.” In Greek this expression represents a stylistic way of calling attention to a person already known by both the speaker and the person addressed. Good News Translation tries to reflect the conversational style of this verse. In English one way of accomplishing it is to introduce the statement by “You remember…” New English Bible handles this matter on a more formal basis by rendering “Rabbi, there was a man with you on the other side of the Jordan….”
The one you spoke about is literally “to whom you have given witness.” As indicated earlier (1.7), the theme of “witness” is basic to John’s Gospel. It should be noted that the verb spoke about is in the perfect tense, indicating the continuing effect of John’s witness to Jesus. New American Bible attempts to capture this aspect of the Greek tense by rendering “the one about whom you have been testifying.” New English Bible and several other translations reproduce a pure biblicism, “to whom you bore your witness.” This expression may be rendered idiomatically in some languages as “That man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan, that one you spoke about, well, he is baptizing people now….”
Well, he (New English Bible “here he is”) is an attempt to bring out the force of the emphatic Semitic expression “behold this one.” The adverb now is introduced by Good News Translation to bring out the emphatic nature of the present tense in this verse. The force of what these people are saying to John the Baptist is that the one about whom John spoke so highly is now baptizing, and so he is in competition with John. Not that Jesus was really working in competition with John the Baptist or that John was competing with Jesus, but evidently John’s disciples felt this way about it. Jerusalem Bible translates in a similar way, “the man … is baptizing now.”
If the receptor language has a tendency to understand “everyone” in an absolute sense, it would be wrong to say “everyone is going to him.” Obviously, there were still people who were going to John and whom he was baptizing. An equivalent expression for the last clause in verse 26 would be “people are now flocking to him” or “many people are now going to him.”
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .