His memory perishes from the earth refers to the memory people had of him, or as Good News Translation says, “his fame.” Earth is here in parallel with the word translated street in the next line. Street translates the Hebrew word which refers to the area outside or beyond; thus street is a satisfactory rendering when the word is used in relation to a house. However, in this verse the word refers to the area that lies outside or beyond a city or inhabited area. The two terms taken together are used to give a picture of the totality of space. Earth refers here to the inhabited, cultivated area, and the word translated street to the remaining areas, which are best described in English as wilderness or uninhabited areas. The two are used in parallel to express “the whole world, everywhere,” or as Good News Translation says, “at home and abroad.” In 5.10 the same words are translated “earth and fields.” The line may also be expressed “Nobody on earth remembers him” or “He is forgotten by everyone on earth.”

And he has no name in the street: for the meaning of street see the previous paragraph. Having no name is equivalent to not being remembered. It serves to give some poetic heightening to this line. Verse 17 may be rendered, for example, “Nobody anywhere remembers him, and he has been forgotten by all” or “Everyone in the world has forgotten him; no one at all remembers who he was.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, Wiliam. A Handbook on Job. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .