In Greek, Jesus is literally “he.” Since this verse opens a new section and a new chapter, Good News Translation makes the reference to Jesus explicit. Phillips and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch do essentially the same thing, and New English Bible has “As he went on his way Jesus saw a man blind from his birth.” In a self-contained unit like this chapter, it is more natural in English to introduce the participant first by his name and then to refer to him by a pronoun, rather than the other way around, as in New English Bible.

Who had been born blind is literally “blind from birth.” The expression “from birth” is a good Greek idiom; the equivalent Hebrew idiom would be “from his mother’s womb.” In English it is more natural to speak of a man born blind than to speak of a man “blind from birth” (as in most translations). For this reason Good News Translation restructures the sentence. As suggested, it would be possible to translate “who had always been blind.” It is also possible to fill out the meaning expressed in born by saying “who had been blind from the very time his mother gave birth to him” or “… caused him to come into the world” or “… caused him to be born.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .