Forsake not an old friend, for a new one does not compare with him: Putting these lines into the plural in order to avoid the exclusively masculine reference (Good News Translation “Never abandon old friends; you will never find a new one who can take their place”) seems to lose the personal touch in the affectionate phrase an old friend. Translators must decide what to do here. We are talking, of course, about old friendships, friendships of long standing, not friends who are old. Good News Translation‘s “abandon” is not quite the right word; it sounds like you’re leaving your friend stranded in the desert. The idea is that old friendships should not be allowed to wither, to be neglected. An alternative model is “Never forget your old friends; new ones will never be as good.”

A new friend is like new wine; when it has aged you will drink it with pleasure: This is an awkward comparison; it is hard to rid the mind of the idea of drinking a friend. Good News Translation has reworded the lines, but kept the meaning faithfully: “Friendship is like wine; it gets better as it grows older.” Contemporary English Version has “like bottles of aged wine, they [old friends] bring cheer more than new ones.” This has the ring of a proverb about it, as does the third line of the Greek here, which is literally “new wine, new friend.”

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Sirach. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2008. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.