Exegesis:
homoioi eisin ‘they are like….’ The repetition of homoioi at the beginning of the clause strengthens the emphasis.
paidiois tois en agora kethēmenois kai prosphōnousin allelois ‘children sitting in the market place and calling out to one another.’ The article tois serves to define paidiois as an afterthought. This appears to be a literary mannerism. For the general interpretation of the parable see commentaries. For prosphōneō cf. on 6.13.
agora ‘market place,’ ‘bazaar,’ cf. IDB III, 278.
ha legei ‘which say’ referring back to paidiois and serving to introduce the words which the children call out to one another.
ēulēsamen humin kai ouk ōrchēsasthe ‘we played the flute for you and you did not dance.’
auleō lit. ‘to play the flute,’ is often used of making music to dance.
orcheomai ‘to dance,’ a very general term.
ethrēnēsamen kai ouk eklausate ‘we sang a dirge and you did not weep.’
thrēneō (also 23.27) lit. ‘to wail,’ here probably of singing a dirge at a funeral.
klauō ‘to weep,’ here probably ‘to mourn’ at a funeral (cf. the parallel text Mt. 11.17).
Translation:
Market place, or, ‘place where people buy and/or sell’ (cf. Pohnpeian, Ekari); in one of the Western Toradja languages the term lit. means, ‘meeting-place.’ Often such renderings have the connotation required here, i.e. place where the people of the village or town come together for social activities and amusements. Where this is not the case one must use another term, e.g. ‘cross-roads’ (as would be possible in Balinese, where the principal cross-roads in a village is its social centre), ‘wide place’ (in Chuukese the common term for the central gathering place), ‘plaza’ (Latin America).
We piped to you, or, ‘for you’; or with a syntactic shift, ‘you heard us pipe.’ To pipe, or, ‘to play the flute,’ ‘to touch/beat the flute’ (as is idiomatic in Spanish and Batak Toba), or more generically, ‘to make music’ (Pohnpeian); or again, using a cultural equivalent, ‘to drum’ (Toraja-Sa’dan, Tboli). If it is necessary to be specific as to the occasion, a wedding is probably the most obvious opposite of the funeral implied in the next sentence (cf. Good News Translation, Marathi, Kituba).
Dance. Some versions have to use the name of a rather specific dance, e.g. Javanese, East and Toraja-Sa’dan, Batak Toba; if the dance in question is danced only by grown-up persons and/or on serious occasions, one may say ‘play at dancing the … (name) dance.’
We wailed, and you did not weep, or, ‘we wailed to/for you (or, you heard us wail), but you did not weep.’ Both verbs refer here to a public, collective demonstration of grief, as usual at funerals, the former indicating the loud, and probably rather ritualized lamentations of the leaders of the ceremony, the latter to some form of response of the followers. The playful character may again have to be made explicit, as done e.g. in Tae’ by using a reduplicated form of the first verb. To wail, or, ‘to lament,’ ‘to utter cries of grief, or, of mourning,’ ‘to sing funeral songs,’ ‘to sing songs that are sung at a death’ (Tboli). To weep. The rendering may refer to the shedding of tears, cf. e.g. ‘why didn’t your tears drop’ (Tboli), but it need not do so, since terms for another way of expressing grief may be a better cultural equivalent. If two appropriate terms for ‘to wail’ and ‘to weep’ are not available, the second may be rendered by, ‘to wail/lament (etc.) together with us,’ ‘to do the same,’ ‘to join us.’
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.