Mark keeps Jesus' words "talitha cumi" in Aramaic, then translates them

In Mark 5, Jesus enters the house of a synagogue leader named Jairus, whose twelve-year-old daughter has just died. He takes her by the hand and says, "Talitha cumi!" Mark's Gospel is written in Greek, but at this moment it gives the words in Aramaic, and then translates: "Girl, I tell you, get up!"

The author of Mark does this more than once, keeping "Ephphatha," "Be opened," when Jesus heals a deaf man (7:34); "Abba," "Father," in the prayer at Gethsemane (14:36); and the cry from the cross, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" (15:34). Each time a translation follows, which says something about Mark's first readers: they spoke Greek, not Aramaic. Aramaic had been the common language of the region since Persian times, and most scholars think it was the language Jesus usually taught in. These few phrases are the closest the Gospels come to recording the sound of his speech.

Matthew and Luke both retell the scene, and both drop the Aramaic. Luke gives only the Greek, "Child, arise!" (8:54), and Matthew reports no words at all (9:25). Mark's translation also adds something: "I tell you" is not in the Aramaic. The two words themselves are plain, everyday speech, which many commentators hear as the way anyone might wake a child.