Exegesis:
In such statements as these the translator must consciously refrain from making the saying any more definite or explicit than the original, as it stands in Mark.
peri de tēs hēmeras ekeinēs ē tēs hōras ‘but concerning that day or that hour’: this, of course, refers to the time when that day or hour will come (not, as Moffatt has it, ‘no one knows anything of that day or hour’). No great significance is to be attached to the phrase ‘day or hour’: it is simply a way of saying that no one knows the precise moment when ‘the time will come’ (v. 33).
oudeis … oude … oude … ei mē ‘no one … not even … nor … except only’ (cf. Gould). For ei mē ‘except,’ ‘but only’ cf. 2.7.
hoi aggeloi en ouranō (cf. 12.25) ‘the angels in heaven.’
ho huios ‘the Son’: only here in Mark is the phrase used absolutely: elsewhere it is always defined by a following genitive (cf. 1.1).
ho patēr (cf. 8.38) ‘the Father,’ that is, God.
Translation:
That day and that hour is a difficult phrase to translate for two reasons. First, there is the problem of the indefinite nature of the reference (implied in the use of that), whether, for example, to the days of the tribulation (verse 19) or the time of the coming of the Son of man (verse 26) or the lesson from the fig tree (verse 28); (the one thing we are sure of is that it does not refer to the immediately preceding verse dealing with the passing of heaven and earth). Secondly, a problem arises over the use of day and hour without some further designation as to how they are related to any specific event. In order to make some sense of this passage some translators have rendered the first part of this verse ‘no one will know the day or the hour when these things will happen,’ using a phrase occurring at the end of verse 30.
The phrases introduced by not even … nor … but may require the filling in of the elliptical elements, e.g. ‘the angels in heaven do not know this, the Son does not know this; only the Father knows this.’
In many languages one basic problem in the translation of the Son and the Father is that the corresponding words ‘son’ and ‘father’ must be possessed, for, after all, persons cannot be ‘sons’ or ‘fathers’ without being the sons or fathers of someone. In this passage, for example, one must translate in Copainalá Zoque ‘the Son of God does not know, but only my Father….’ The use of ‘my’ is required because of the fact that Jesus is speaking. In languages in which one cannot speak of himself in the third person, it would be necessary to say ‘I who am the Son.’
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 .