Exegesis:

kai meta tauta exēlthen ‘and after this he went out.’ tauta refers to what has been told in vv. 17-26. exēlthen ‘he went out,’ presumably out of the town as the parallel text Mk. 2.13 suggests.

kai etheasato telōnēn ‘and he saw a tax collector.’ For telōnēs cf. on 3.12. Here the word refers probably to a custom-house officer since the great commercial route from Acre to Damascus passed the lake near Capernaum and it may well be that on this route was the custom-office of Levi.

theaomai ‘to see,’ often synonymous with horaō.

onomati Leuin ‘named Levi.’ In v. 29 the nominative Leuis occurs but the usual transliteration is ‘Levi.’

kathēmenon epi to telōnion ‘sitting at, or by, the custom-office.’ The participle kathēmenon goes with telōnēn as an accusative and participle after a verb of perception (etheasato ‘he saw’).

telōnion (only here and the parallels Mk. 2.14 and Mt. 9.9) ‘custom-office,’ ‘revenue office.’

akolouthei moi ‘follow me’ without introductory words or an indication of the circumstances under which Levi was called to follow Jesus.

Translation:

He went out. Where a literal rendering would restrict the meaning to leaving the house it may be preferable to say ‘he departed’ (Sundanese), or more explicitly, “he left the town” (The Four Gospels – a New Translation).

Saw a tax collector, …, sitting …, or, ‘saw a tax collector, …, who was sitting, or, as he sat.’ Because an unrelated character is introduced here (cf. on 1.5) the clause structure may have to be changed, e.g. ‘Now there was a tax collector, … sitting…; Jesus saw him (or, looked at him) and said….’

Tax collector, see on 3.12.

Tax office. Sometimes the rendering is a locative derivation built on the term for ‘tax/customs’ or ‘to gather-tax/customs.’ In the present verse, however, it is also possible simply to say, ‘in his office’ (Tae’), the possessive serving to identify the kind of office meant.

Follow me, see on v. 11.

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.