Her sandal ravished his eyes, her beauty captivated his mind, and the sword severed his neck: Irony pervades these three lines with their simple parallelism; at each point of the parallelism the third line is out of place and shocks: sandal and beauty matched by sword, ravished and captivated matched by severed, eyes and mind matched by neck. A less perceptible irony is that Holofernes was the one who had intended to ravish and captivate Judith, but her beauty captivated his mind, meaning he thought she was so beautiful that he could think of nothing else. Good News Translation‘s “dainty sandal” clarifies the image of sexuality used here, but the Greek does not have the adjective “dainty.” What charmed Holofernes was not Judith’s footwear, but her sexuality. “Dainty sandal” maintains the image but at the same time explains it. In some languages it will be difficult to talk about objects like “sandals” or “swords” doing actions independently of the humans wearing them or wielding them. An alternative model that evades this problem is:

• He liked her feet in sandals and thought she was lovely;
but then she took his own sword and cut off his head!

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Judith. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.