Have regard for your name, since it will remain for you: Have regard for means to be careful for, to watch out for any danger. Good News Translation has “Protect,” which works well with “reputation,” since a person protects his reputation by living an upright life. Another way to express the first clause is “Be careful that you always have a good reputation [or, name].” For it will remain for you, Good News Translation has “it will outlive you,” and Contemporary English Version says “Your reputation won’t die with you.”

Longer than a thousand great stores of gold: A treasury of gold will do a person good only so long as he lives, but a good name will live on long after his death. If the phrase a thousand great stores of gold sounds unnatural in a translator’s language, this line may be rendered “last longer than all the gold [or, money] in the world.”

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.