Their children lost heart: “Children were becoming weak” (Good News Translation, similarly Contemporary English Version) is the idea, not lost heart. Moore and New Revised Standard Version use “Their children were listless,” also a good choice of words.

Women and young men fainted from thirst: “Women and young people” is probably better than women and young men. The Greek word for young men can include young women as well as young men. One can of course argue that women includes women of all ages including the younger ones. Curiously Good News Translation omits the idea that people were collapsing from thirst. True, any reader would assume this, but it certainly does not hurt, and may help, to state it clearly and specifically.

Fell down in the streets of the city and in the passages through the gates: Passages through the gates refers to the area available for people to walk through when the gates themselves were open. The gates were fortified portions of the city wall in which the doors were set. The gateway might be several meters in length and several meters across. It was plenty of room for a number of dying people. Good News Translation collapses in the streets of the city and in the passages through the gates into “everywhere throughout the town.” This loses impact by not being as specific as the Greek text. Good News Translation gets the idea, but the Greek paints a vivid picture. Revised Standard Version is unnecessarily wordy, but “in the streets and gateways” (New English Bible, New American Bible) is concise and effective. An alternative model for this clause along with the previous one is: “The women and young people became so thirsty that they fainted and collapsed all over the town, in the streets and gateways.”

No strength left in them any longer: Good News Translation closes the paragraph effectively with the single short summary sentence “No one had any strength left.” Technically, the Greek text is speaking here only of the women and young men, but Good News Translation‘s summary statement gains more in literary punch than it loses in grammatical specificity. It is rather strange that mention is not made here or in the next verse of the men of fighting age. They were last mentioned in verse 5, keeping guard on the city walls. The narrative implies that they are present in verse 23, since it is supposedly these men (though the Greek does not specifically mention them) who return to their stations on the walls when Uzziah dismisses the assembly in verse 32.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Judith. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.