Exegesis:

The use of erchontai eis ‘they come to’ and ekporeuomenou autou apo ‘as he was leaving from’ indicates that Jesus and his disciples passed through the city on the way to Jerusalem.

ochlou hikanou ‘a large crowd,’ ‘a sizeable multitude.’

hikanos (cf. 1.7) here means ‘large,’ ‘considerable’ (cf. Moulton & Milligan).

prosaitēs (only here in Mark) ‘beggar.’

The other words have already been dealt with: for tuphlos ‘blind’ cf. 8.22; kathēmai ‘be seated’ cf. 2.6; para tēn hodon either ‘alongside (by) the road’ or ‘on the road’ (cf. 4.4).

Translation:

They, as subject of the first verb, is contextually clear, but syntactically confusing in many languages. Since, however, they refers to the same group as are indicated later in the verse, namely, ‘Jesus … with his disciples and a great multitude,’ it may be possible to change the order of elements so that the passage may be less misleading, e.g. ‘Jesus with his disciples and a great crowd of people arrived at Jericho town, and as they were leaving, Bartimaeus….’

Beggar may be rendered ‘a man who was always asking for money,’ for though beggars are common enough in most parts of the world, one must simply describe their activities in those regions where such activity is not known.

The double appositive expressions, i.e. a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, must in some languages be recast as dependent descriptive clauses, e.g. ‘who was a blind beggar and the son of Timaeus’ or as paratactically combined statements, e.g. ‘Bartimaeus was sitting along the road; he was a blind beggar; he was the son of Timaeus.’ The choice of syntactic forms is dependent upon the requirements of the receptor language.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .