Do not try to treat him as an equal: This is a warning about acting in a presumptuous manner once you are in the presence of the important person. If the governor speaks to you, you don’t go running up, pat him on the back, and call him by his first name. Good News Translation “Don’t pretend to be his equal” is a good model, and so is Contemporary English Version “Don’t try to be their equal.”

Nor trust his abundance of words: Good News Translation “Don’t … trust everything he says” is misleading; it seems to imply that you can trust some of what he says. Ben Sira would probably want us to trust nothing a person in power might say. Good News Translation further omits the idea of an abundance of words. A better rendering for this line is “and don’t trust what he says, no matter how long he talks” or “Don’t … trust them when they have long talks with you” (Contemporary English Version).

For he will test you through much talk, and while he smiles he will be examining you: The important person is engaging you—you!—in conversation, but you must not let it make you feel too important. He has an ulterior motive, a hidden agenda. He wants to take advantage of you, so he tries to discover everything he can about you. A slight change in Good News Translation yields a good model: “In spite of all his long and polite conversation, he is trying to find out all he can about you.” However, we may also keep the poetic form with:

• He smiles as he continues talking,
but is trying to find out all he can about you.

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.