Exegesis:

hōs anthrōpos apodēmos ‘(It is) like a man (who is going) away on a trip.’

apodēmos (only here in the N.T.; cf. apodēmeō, 12.1) is an adjective meaning ‘away on a trip,’ ‘away from one’s country.’

apheis (cf. 2.5) ‘leaving’: the participle is equivalent to the relative phrase hos aphēken ‘who left.’

doulois (cf. 10.44) ‘slaves.’

tēn exousian (cf. 1.22) ‘the authority,’ ‘the power’: here, as Revised Standard Version has it, to give the authority to the slaves means to put them in charge (cf. Goodspeed, Moffatt). Lagrange comments that ‘the authority’ given the slaves is a certain degree of autonomy: “each one will be free to do his own job in his own way.”

hekastō (only here in Mark) ‘to each one,’ ‘to every one.’

to ergon (14.6) ‘the work,’ ‘the task,’ ‘the job’: Arndt & Gingrich ‘assigned to each one his task.’ The word ergon is in the accusative case, the object of the participle dous ‘giving.’

tō thurōrō (only here in Mark) ‘to the doorkeeper,’ ‘to the gate guard.’

eneteilato hina grēgorē ‘he commanded that he be on watch,’ ‘he ordered (him) to remain alert.’

entellomai (cf. 10.3) ‘command,’ ‘order.’

hina ‘that’ denotes the content of the order, not its purpose (cf. 3.9).

grēgoreō (13.35, 37; 14.34, 37, 38) ‘be awake,’ ‘watch,’ ‘be alert’: the verb is formed from the perfect form of egeirō ‘rise.’

Translation:

It is like is a very indefinite type of transitional phrase from the preceding verse, and as such must in some languages be adapted to other syntactic and lexical requirements, e.g. ‘in the same way a man went on a journey…’ (South Bolivian Quechua), or ‘all this is like what happens when a man…’ or ‘this is just like the experience of a man who….’

Because of the relative complexity of the subject-predicate constructions in this verse, some major breaks are often required, e.g. ‘this is just like what happens when a man goes on a journey; he leaves home and gives special authority to his servants. Each has his own work. He commands the man who guards the door to be on the look-out continually.’

Puts his servants in charge is often equivalent to ‘gives his servants responsibility for everything,’ i.e. for everything about the estate.

Each with his work is translatable as ‘he gives each servant a special work to do.’

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .