Keep words to yourself and be very watchful: Good News Translation does well here, but the following slight change might improve it: “Keep your thoughts to yourself and be very careful.”

For you are walking about with your own downfall: This essentially means “for anything you say can bring about your ruin.” You are walking about with your own downfall is a strange picture, although ben Sira’s grandson, who translated it into Greek, probably enjoyed this clause; it is marvelous when read aloud. Good News Translation preserves the imagery of walking with “you are always walking on dangerous ground,” but we may do away with the imagery by saying “you are risking disaster” or “you may cause your own ruin.”

Contemporary English Version reorders the clauses in this verse as follows:

• Be careful! Don’t risk disaster
by sharing your secrets.

Some manuscripts add verse 14. It should be included in a footnote at the end of verse 13 (so New Revised Standard Version). In the Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation footnotes, this added material is marked as verses 13b-14. Translators are urged to do the same.

When you hear these things in your sleep, wake up!: These lines sound like a comment made in the margin by some early scribe. He probably meant sleep in a figurative sense, and is calling on those who are naive and unaware of the dangers of trusting people in power to come to their senses. Contemporary English Version‘s “Wake up and pay attention!” is a good model.

During all your life love the Lord may be rendered “Every day of your life, love the Lord” (Contemporary English Version), or even “You should love the Lord throughout your whole life.”

And call on him for your salvation may be translated “and call on [or, ask/pray to] him to protect 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.