Exegesis:

ēsan gar hōsei andres pentakischilioi ‘for there were about five thousand men.’ The clause refers to panta ton laon touton in v. 13. The use of andres instead of anthrōpoi implies that women and children are not included in the number.

eipen de ‘then he said,’ rather than ‘but he said.’ de is continuative, not contrastive.

kataklinate autois klisias [hōsei] ana pentēkonta ‘make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.’ For kataklinō cf. on 7.36; here it is transitive. For hōsei cf. on 3.23; for ana cf. on v. 3.

klisia ‘group of people eating together.’ Here it is in the accusative plural, as an apposition which denotes the result of kataklinate.

Translation:

About. Approximation may be expressed variously, e.g. ‘perhaps’ (Toraja-Sa’dan), a term related to the word for ‘estimate’ (Bahasa Indonesia, Batak Toba), ‘more or less,’ or the indefinite article, cf. ‘a five thousand.’

Five thousand. Terms for 1000 may be basically descriptive, cf. e.g. ‘ant heap’ (Shona), ‘large/uncountable number’ (East Nyanja, Yao). In some cases the rendering must be built on smaller units, and/or be expressed by approximation, cf. e.g. ‘sixty sixties and more yet’ (Ekari, adding the last three words to distinguish the phrase from the one rendering “four thousand”, in Mk. 8.9), or, ‘very many.’ In the former case it may be possible to indicate the number indirectly, i.e. by using ‘in hundred companies, about fifty men each’ in the next clause.

Make them sit down, or, ‘tell them all to sit on the ground.’ The attitude may have to be specified.

In companies, about fifty each, or, ‘forming-groups about fifty one-group’ (Bahasa Indonesia), ‘about fifty-fifty one-group’ (Balinese, the repetition expressing the distributive use of the numeral). If the category numbered must be indicated one may hesitate here between ‘fifty male persons’ and ‘fifty persons (including men, women, and children),’ but ‘men/male persons’ seems to be preferable, because the correlation 5000-50 suggests that in both cases the same category is meant.

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.