The people there (Phillips “the people”) is literally “the Galileans”; but the people there is more natural within the Good News Translation restructuring of the verse, since these words immediately follow when he arrived in Galilee.

Good News Translation restructures the last part of this verse, which appears in Revised Standard Version as “having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast, for they too had gone to the feast.” Good News Translation first introduces the information that the people had gone to the Passover Festival, thus providing the background for the explanation that they had seen everything that he had done during the festival. In keeping with the consensus of New Testament scholarship, “the feast” is identified as the Passover Festival.

There are certain problems in the sequence of tenses in verse 45. Note that the time of arrived precedes welcomed, but had gone precedes both arrived and welcomed but is followed by had seen. It may be necessary in some languages to restructure this verse, for example, “The people in Galilee had gone to the Passover festival in Jerusalem and they saw everything that Jesus did during the festival; hence, when Jesus arrived in Galilee, the people there welcomed him.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .