He who sat upon the cloud: the text does not say whether he got off the cloud in order to reap. A translation should not say or imply that he did.

Swung his sickle on the earth: this is a natural way in English to speak of working with a sickle. In some languages it may be more natural to say “cut with his sickle,” or “reaped with his sickle,” or “worked with his sickle.”

The earth was reaped: that is, the harvest on earth was reaped; the harvest is the human race. However, translators should not say this explicitly. An alternative translation model is “collected (or, gathered) the harvest.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Revelation to John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .