The Greek participle translated went in the Good News Translation is rendered as a temporal clause by most translators, for example, “when he reached Jerusalem” (New English Bible). Both this sentence and the following sentence serve as good illustrations of one of the techniques followed in the Good News Translation translation. Very frequently the Good News Translation translates such participial constructions as simple statements, since these are more easily understood by the English reader. This same technique is frequently followed by other English translations; however, they generally translate participles as subordinate clauses rather than as coordinate clauses. For example, the participle “not believing” (see Phillips “finding it impossible to believe”) is rendered by the New English Bible as “because they did not believe” and by the Revised Standard Version as “for they did not believe.” Of course, in many instances it is necessary to translate participles as subordinate clauses, and the Good News Translation has done this when the meaning requires such a usage. By reversing the order of the Greek clauses the Good News Translation has introduced the causative meaning of the Greek sentence into the corresponding English expression without using a subordinate clause. That is, the causative force of the participle has been brought out by putting they would not believe first in the sentence, followed by and they were all afraid of him. The average reader will then understand that their not believing him caused them to be afraid.

Join the disciples may be rendered as “to become one with the disciples” or “to be considered one of the disciples.”

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 .