For stylistic reasons Good News Translation translates He said to them as “answered Jesus” and places the clause after the first part of the quotation. Many languages will find the order “speaker-speaker’s words” simpler than “speaker’s words-speaker,” while other languages find it necessary to mark the speaker before and after the quotation.

The noun phrase your little faith is transformed into a clause with subject and verb in Good News Translation: “you do not have enough faith.” In place of the noun little faith, some Greek manuscripts have the noun “without faith,” which scholars believe was introduced by a later scribe because it is a better known word. In fact, the support for little faith is so much superior to that of the alternative, that none of the modern translations even note the other reading. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates “your faith was not great enough.” In instances where faith must be rendered as a verb, one may translate “you did not really believe that God would do it” or “… would heal the boy.”

The purpose of the entire narrative is to focus upon the saying of Jesus regarding faith in the last part of this verse. For truly, I say to you translates the same formula used in 5.18.

If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed is problematic from at least two perspectives: (1) the average reader will not realize that in the biblical culture the mustard seed was considered one of the smallest seeds; and (2) it is not clear than the comparison is between the size of the seed and the size of the disciples’ faith. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch is somewhat more explicit (“If your faith is only as large as a mustard seed”), as is New English Bible (“if you have faith no bigger even than a mustard-seed”).

Another problem arises in languages where faith is normally expressed as a verb. Translators may say “If the way you believe in God is small, just like a mustard seed,” but it may be better to drop the comparison and say simply “If you believe in God even a little bit.” Note from these examples that if it is necessary to have an object of faith it should be “God.”

A grain of mustard seed really means “a mustard seed.” See comment at 13.32. “The small seed of the mustard plant” is a good way to render it when readers are not familiar with mustard. It is not essential to the story to try to use some plant that readers know.

The word translated mountain may also mean “hill” (Good News Translation). However, for cultures familiar with mountains and hills, the better choice will doubtless be mountain, since the intention is to contrast the small size of the mustard seed with the enormous size of the largest physical object known. Although the words are reminiscent of certain verses from Isaiah (40.4; 49.11), they probably had assumed the form of a proverbial saying for the overcoming of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. In the context, this mountain can refer to the one Jesus had descended a short time previously. The translation should not make it seem Jesus was referring to a mountain he was standing on.

You will say (so also New English Bible) is a simple future in Greek, but the force of the verb is obviously conditional (either “you can say” or “you could say”) as a number of translations indicate (for example, Jerusalem Bible, Moffatt, New International Version, An American Translation, Phillips, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch).

Both Revised Standard Version (Move from here to there) and Good News Translation: (“Go from here to there”) represent formal translations of the Greek.

If it is more natural to use indirect discourse, translators can have “You could order this mountain to move from this place to that place (or, from one place to another).”

Will move is also a future verb form, but “and it would move” will probably fit the sentence better.

And nothing will be impossible to you represents an unusual and awkward word order for native speakers of English, which Good News Translation simplifies to “You could do anything!” To accomplish this restructuring, two steps were taken: (1) the two negative forms (nothing … impossible) were reduced to one simplified positive form, and (2) the unnatural word order (nothing will be … to you) was changed into a word order that is common among speakers of the language. One way some translations have retained the negatives and still been fairly natural is “There is nothing you couldn’t do.”

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 .