Exegesis:

pherousin (cf. 1.32) ‘they bring’: an impersonal plural meaning ‘people (men) brought.’

kōphon (7.37; 9.25) literally ‘dull’: it may either ‘dumb,’ ‘mute,’ or (as it does here) ‘deaf.’

mogilalon (only here in the N.T.) ‘speaking with difficulty’ (mogis ‘with difficulty’), ‘speaking with an impediment.’

The rest of the words have already been dealt with: parakalousin (cf. 1.40) ‘they begged’; hina (cf. 5.10, 18) ‘that,’ of content; epithē … tēn cheira (cf. 5.23) ‘he place his hand upon.’

Translation:

They may need to be more specific, so as not to refer to the disciples, e.g. ‘some people’ or ‘certain persons.’

Either in this verse, or in the preceding, it may be necessary to use ‘Jesus’ in place of a pronoun, since the closest specific referent is several verses back (note that in the Revised Standard Version text one has to go back to 6.30).

Deaf may be translated simply as ‘he could not hear,’ though there are always quite adequate terms for ‘deaf.’

Impediment in his speech may be equivalent to ‘he could not speak well’ (Southern Subanen) or ‘he had difficulty speaking.’ This would seem to imply that the man had either been deaf a long while or was congenitally so, in which case the impediment would have been serious indeed.

The pronouns they … him … his … him must be carefully handled, e.g. ‘the people asked Jesus to lay his hands on the sick man.’ One must avoid any connotations of ‘laying on hands’ to arrest. This is the ‘touching’ of healing and mercy.

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 .