Translators should study the paragraph breaks made by New Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation through the rest of the chapter. Good News Translation has many more paragraphs than New Revised Standard Version. Translators should decide what is more natural style in their language.

I have been there … I am acquainted with … know all the roads: The first sentence of Raphael’s reply uses three verbs in the first person singular. The object of the second one, I am acquainted with, is not clear. Good News Translation apparently takes it to be “roads,” building the force of the last two verbs with that one object into “I know all the roads well” (similarly Contemporary English Version). New Revised Standard Version and New American Bible, probably more accurately, take the object to be Media: “I know the place well” (New American Bible). The two clauses I have been there many times and I have often traveled to Media are combined in Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version. An alternative translation model for this first sentence is “Raphael replied, ‘Yes, I do! I have traveled to the country of Media many times. I know it very well and also know all the roads.’ ”

Would stay with our kinsman Gabael: The verb form would stay shows that Raphael is saying not only that he has been in Media often, but that on at least several occasions he has boarded with his relative Gabael.

Rages of Media: Good News Translation once again identifies Rages as a town. Of Media is equivalent to Good News Translation “there” in the phrase “who lives there.” As Good News Translation notes, Rages is a textual correction. Our Greek manuscript has “Ecbatana.” (Rahlfs’s Greek text has “Rages,” but his note explains it as a conjectural emendation.) Translators are urged to use the name Rages.

It is a journey of two days from Ecbatana to Rages: It is in fact almost 300 kilometers (185 miles). Alexander’s army is said to have taken ten days to travel the distance, but translators must follow the text of Tobit and say “a journey of two days.” Good News Translation helpfully identifies Ecbatana as “the capital city” of Media. “Capital city” may also be expressed as “the big city,” “the city where the king lives,” or “the chief’s village.”

For it lies in a mountainous area, while Ecbatana is in the middle of the plain: A bad textual problem accounts for the clause while Ecbatana is in the middle of the plain in New Revised Standard Version. Good News Translation has no equivalent to this. The Greek manuscript both New Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation are following has “for [Rages] lies in the….” The last word of the line has been erased, and very small handwriting in the margin adds “mountain; Ecbatana in the middle of the plain.” Good News Translation accepts “mountain” as a proper end to the sentence: “in the mountains.” (The Greek noun may refer to a mountainous area as well as to a single mountain.) Good News Translation omits, however, the added comment about Ecbatana, whereas New Revised Standard Version, New American Bible, the Jerusalem Bible (Jerusalem Bible), and New Jerusalem Bible translate the whole marginal comment. Traduction œcuménique de la Bible takes yet a different approach by translating “because these are two cities located in the mountains.” This approach makes a great deal of sense and can be defended from the Greek grammar. It neatly solves one problem: Ecbatana was in a mountainous region, not on a plain (compare the end of verse 10). We recommend Traduction œcuménique de la Bible‘s approach and suggest this as a model for the final sentence:

• The cities of Rages and Ecbatana are in the mountains,* and a person must walk two days to get from one to the other.
* The cities … mountains; the Greek text of this clause in not certain.

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