10.5.2012 LUTHER VIII - TRANSLATION

101.1...'medieval translators regarded it as their duty to translate word for word,
so far as that was possible,
fearing otherwise to fail to do justice to the sacred text
(in their case, the vulgate).
this went so far that they did not even ask whether their word usage and sentence construction might perhaps do violence to the laws of the language into which they were translating.
the more literal, the better.
the humanists, also, demanded that translators should follow the original as closely as possible.
in the first years of his professorship, L held to the same viewpoint.
but as early as 1520 he wrote to spalatin that a translator must be able to move about freely in his own language.
he many not be a 'prisoner of the text'.
that which lives  in the text can be transmitted only through a free translation;
not to speak
-so he adds-
of the difficulties that are involved when one really attempts to convey the spirit of the author!

in these words L summarizes his entire purpose.
translating has to do with reproducing the spirit of the author.
God's purpose in the bible is to address men, here and now, with His word of law and gospel.
he wants to do this in their own language.
they must be able to read God's word 'as though it were written yesterday'.
L is profoundly convinced that he has rediscovered the basic message,
the beating heart of the scripture.
it is this living word he must interpret.
this cannot be done merely by reproducing the letter.
translating the bible is a spiritual task,
a creative work.
it is, in itself, a form of exegesis.
a merely grammatical, historical understanding is insufficient,
a deeply personal understanding, granted only though one's own experience of faith, is required.
no one can understand God's word,
and so no one can translate it,
but by the Holy Spirit.
translation demands more than knowledge,
with which one can attain only to the dead letter.
it requires
'an upright
pious
faithful
diligent
obedient
christian
practiced and
experienced
heart.
it is, therefore, a gift of grace when one is preserved from remaining a slave of the letter
and thus from interpreting the bible according to the flesh.

thus, one can readily concede that L did not approach the translation of the bible as an academic task. in that case his purpose would have been to maintain the closest possible philological contact with the original document. the language into which one translates must, in such cases, fit itself so far as possible to the rules of the original language, so that the structure of the original language, so that the structure of the original text can clearly be seen in the translation.
L has a different purpose.

this purpose might be called edification,
in the good sense of the word,
to 'build' faith.
that is why he will be no buchstabilist, as he calls it,
no servant of the letter.
he tries to understand and reproduce the spiritual content of the text.
a faithful translation, to him,
is not the most literal translation possible, word for word,
but the transition of the spirit and purpose of the passage.
this the translator must himself have experienced,
if he is to do his task,
which is to establish contact between the original author and his readers.
concerning erasmus  he comments,
'he has indeed translated the new testament, but he has not felt it.
in his judgment the man from rotterdam was too cool, too objective in his concentration on historical-philological matters.
'no one,
he writes to erasmus,
can see an iota in the scripture if he does not have the Spirit of God.

it is doubly important that a translator of the bible be filled with the spirit of the author
in order to transmit the meaning of his writing to his readers,
because here the viva vox,
the living voice of God,
is contained in letter, word and sentence.
through this book God wants to speak to men, here and now.
for this reason the bible must,
in translation also.
speak the living language of those who seek after God.
repeatedly the reformer comments in his table conversations that it is his concern in translating the bible to convey the content and spirit of the scripture, its character as proclamation, and not merely its grammar.

his 'open letter concerning translation sharply refutes his critics, who maintain that his free translation fails to do justice to the scriptures. powerfully he points out that the opposite is true and points to some specific passages of the new testament which have been clarified through his method. he then comments,
'you cannot peak german with a greek or hebrew tongue.

matt. 12.34 reads, literally,
'out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
L had himself translated it like this in his postille, but in the letter he asks:
'tell me, is that german?
what german would understand such a thing?
what does 'abundance of heart' mean?
you just cannot say that in german, for it would suggest that someone had an enlarged heart or too much of one-although even then the expression would not quite fit. abundance of the heart is simply not german, any more than one can say abundance of the house, abundance of the stove, abundance of  the chair. but the mother in her home and the common man would say:
if the heart is full the mouth will overflow.
that is good german
and it is that which i have done my best to speak,
even though i have not everywhere succeeded in finding the precise terms.
for the latin language makes it particularly difficult for us to speak good german.

much more important, from a theological point of view, was the question how best to translate the angelic greeting to mary in luke 1.28. there we read,
'hail, o favored one.
the greek word here translated 'favored one' might also originally mean, 'you who have made yourself loved' or 'you who are in favor'.
the vulgate however had translated this as,
'Thou who art full of grace' (ave, gratia plena).
L's translation was...(gives german words)..,
a word which expresses the thought lovely' in warm and elevated fashion.
erasmus had also dropped the gratia plena, using instead the more literal translation gratiosa,
meaning one who has received favor or who is loved.
it is quite understandable that L's new translation of a text so commonly used in liturgy and devotion should have attracted attention.
the theologians were particularly offended because the scholastici were accustomed to use the expression from the vulgate, 'full of grace', s a support for their doctrine of gratia infua, 'infused grace'. whoever removed this support caused their entire theological system to crumble.

in his defense of his translation of luke 1.28, L does not say a word concerning the theological background. here again it is, according to him, simply a question of speaking good german.
'when the angel greets mary and says,
'hail mary, full of grace. the Lord be with you-
well, that means that we have thus far a poor translation,
nothing more than the literal rendering of the latin text.
tell me honestly, is that good german?
what german would say today,
'you are full of grace?
and what german would understand it, if it were said?
he can think of a keg jull of beer or a chest full of gold.
that is why i have germanized it with du holdselige,
because then a german can understand approximately what the angel intended with his greeting.
and now the papists rage at me and complain that i have garbled the angel's greeting.
even my translation did not go far enough.
for in really good german the greeting would sound like this,
gott grusse dich, du liebe maria, for that is what the angel really says.
these are the words he would have used, had he spoken german.
if i would have translated it like that, they,
out of reverence for dear mary and anger that i had completely destroyed the greeting,
might well have hanged themselves.

'but i cannot let this bother me, continues l.
'i translate as i think it ought to be and not as i have been told.
this is really not their business.
i say, (quotes the german he wrote)
they may say, if they will,
'thou full of grace mary.
whoever knows german recognized what a really splendid  thing it is to say,
'die liebe maria, der liebe Gott, das liebe Kind...
neither latin nor any other language has such a word that penetrates and resounds in our hearts, touching every sense, as this word does in our tongue.

in rare cases, however, L consciously clings to the letter of his text, translating word for word so far as possible, even though he knows that thereby he does more or less violence to german.
it is thus interesting to note what he says concerning our Lord's prayer.
'the 'our Father' is full of hebraic turns, which betray that Christ's mother tongue was syrian.
l did not want to eliminate any of these, but rather to translate them as literally as possible, because content and form, the unique modes of expression of this foreign tongue and the essence of the prayer itself, have so merged into one that it is not possible to separate them without inflicting damage on the whole.

161.1...' in the meantime L proceeded with his plan of making a complete revision of his translation of the psalms. so important did he regard this objective-the securing of a good and genuinely german psalter-that even though he was himself in complete command of the material, he selected a committee of revision to assist him in a painstaking restudy of his earlier work. perhaps he had, even then, the intention of using this same commission for the entire bible. it was his firm conviction that translation can best be done through teamwork.
'translators must never work by themselves. when one is alone, the best and most suitable words do not always occur to him.

172.1...'psalm 63.5 had been reproduced literally in my earlier translation,
says L,
so that it read:
'let my soul become full, as with marrow and fatness, that my mouth will utter praise with joyful. lips'.
said in this way the verse is meaningless to us germans. the words 'marrow' and 'fatness' point to such joy as healthy and well fed cattle experience, who are cheerful and therefore grow vigorously, while on the other and those who lack this lust for life grow thin. for this reason i made good german of this verse and translated it as follows:
'this would be my hearts joy and gladness, if i should praise Thee with a joyful mouth.
for this was david's meaning, when he was forced to remain outside the city while fleeing saul and was unable to participate in the sacred services and to hear the word of God, which brings comfort to all saddened hearts.
'if one wants to speak good german he dare not be restricted by hebrew colloquialisms. rather, having understood the hebrew text and grasped its meaning, he must ask,
how would a german have spoken in such a case?
then, when he has found the german colloquialism, he may cast aside the hebrew words and reproduce their meaning in the best german that he can master.

L also gives instances where his translation differs from the traditional one because his understanding of the text is Christological. certainly this 'spiritual exegesis' exerted a particular influence especially in the translation of the psalms. on this ground he sometimes permitted himself liberties which philological considerations would not have justified. it is noteworthy that for precisely this same reason he translated other texts quite literally, at the expense of good german, because the hebrew mode of expression conveys the Christological perspective, which he sees therein, more effectively. as an illustration of this he mentions psalm 68.16, where he prefers the hebraic,
'Thou hast imprisoned the prison' to the,
'Thou hast released the prisoners,
which he would otherwise have preferred, since the prison is a figure of the law, sin, and death. consequently he sees a parallel here with the statements of paul that through the law i am dead to the law (gal. 2.19), that sin is condemned through sin (rom. 8.3), and that death is killed by Christ II Tim. 1.10).
'these are the prisons which Christ has taken prisoner and thereby destroyed, so that death no longer has us in its power, sin can no longer hold us as guilty slaves, and the law can no longer condemn us, as paul constantly proclaims in his rich, glorious, encouraging proclamation. for the sake of this doctrine and for the comfort of our consciences we must therefore hold fast to the literal text and to the hebrew order of words, wherever they are better able to express the intent of the passage than would the german equivalent.
in this way L's translation of the psalm was interpenetrated with his own spiritual experience and theology, whether he dealt freely with the original text or followed it slavishly.