This verse begins a new paragraph, and the Good News Translation has made the participants explicit: the people listened to Paul (literally “they listened to him”). The clause until he said this may need to be somewhat more specific, since in a number of languages a pronoun such as this cannot readily refer to a statement or topic—for example, “until he spoke about going to the Gentiles.”

But then they started shouting at the top their voices is literally “then they lifted up their voices and said.” The New English Bible takes this clause to mean “but now they began shouting,” while An American Translation* understands this in the sense of “but then they shouted.”

Away with him! Kill him! is literally “Away from the earth with such a person!” The phrase “from the earth” merely intensifies and qualifies “away with him,” and there is no other way to understand this than in the sense of “kill him” (see Phillips “Kill him, and rid the earth of such a man!”). It is, of course, not necessary to translate both phrases away with him and kill him. The two expressions in English are simply complementary ways of translating the same Greek terms. If there is in the receptor language a strong expression for kill him, this should be sufficient.

The sentence He’s not fit to live! may be rendered as “He should not be allowed to live!” or “It is not right that he should live!”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .