Jesus answered: presumably it was the man he was answering, yet his words seem to be addressed either to the disciples or, more likely, after experiencing the lack of faith of the disciples, he is making a general statement about the people of that day. For this reason, in some languages Jesus answered will more naturally be “Jesus responded by saying (to the disciples).”
To address someone with O is not natural in current English, and Good News Translation does not use it.
A faithless … generation means that the people of that day had no faith. Translators could say “You people have no faith” or “You people don’t believe in God at all.” As we suggested above, Jesus probably included the disciples as well as the crowds as being people with no faith.
Perverse, representing a participle used as an adjective, is the choice of many English translations. Phillips prefers “difficult,” Good News Translation has “wrong,” and An American Translation selects “obstinate” as the meaning. The same form of the participle is also used in Philippians 2.15, where Good News Bible translates “sinful.” The basic meaning of the form is “misled” or “led astray,” which explains the rendering perverse. However, for English readers perverse may not be the best choice because it comes too close in sound to “pervert,” which implies unnatural sexual behavior. Other expressions such as “misguided” or “confused” are closer to the meaning. One possibility for translating perverse will be to use a verb instead of an adjective. The sentence can be “You people! You have no faith and you don’t know what is right or wrong.”
Both Revised Standard Version (How long am I to bear with you?) and Good News Translation: (“How long do I have to put up with you?”) represent fairly literal renderings of the Greek text, which is in the form of a rhetorical question that does not anticipate an answer. It may be altered to a statement: “I hope I don’t have to put up with you much longer.”
Bring him here: it may be advisable at this point to identify him as “the boy” (Good News Translation).
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .