For overeating brings sickness, and gluttony leads to nausea: The question here is whether overeating and gluttony mean the same thing, or have slightly different meanings. Good News Translation takes overeating to be what someone might do on a single occasion, and gluttony to refer to habitual behavior. This can be justified; the first line is literally “For with many foods is sickness.” Also, Good News Translation takes sickness to be a one-time thing, but nausea to be a chronic problem: “you’ll get sick … you’ll always have stomach trouble.” This too is possible; the second line is literally “and gluttony leads to cholera.” While the word translated nausea was used in Greek to refer to what we today call cholera, like other terms in ancient medicine, it could cover a variety of disorders that in some way resemble cholera, marked by vomiting. (“Cholera” would not be an accurate translation here.) While Good News Translation‘s approach to this verse can be defended, we could also say that the two lines are simply synonymous, and collapse them into something like “If you eat too much, you’ll get sick,” which is Good News Translation‘s translation of the first line alone. Contemporary English Version collapses both lines into one with “You will get sick if you eat too much.” We cannot speak with certainty about this, or even with much confidence. The Handbook prefers Contemporary English Version, or using just the first sentence of Good News Translation.

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.