Mary, Full of Beer
Now when the angel greets Mary, he says: “Greetings to you, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” Well up to this point, this has simply been translated from the simple Latin, but tell me is that good German? Since when does a German speak like that—being “full of grace”? One would have to think about a keg “full of” beer or a purse “full of” money. So I translated it: “You gracious one”. This way a German can at last think about what the angel meant by his greeting. Yet the papists rant about me corrupting the angelic greeting—and I still have not used the most satisfactory German translation. What if I had used the most satisfactory German and translated the salutation: “God says hello, Mary dear” (for that is what the angel was intending to say and what he would have said had he even been German!). If I had, I believe that they would have hanged themselves out of their great devotion to dear Mary and because I have destroyed the greeting.
Yet why should I be concerned about their ranting and raving? I will not stop them from translating as they want. But I too shall translate as I want and not to please them, and whoever does not like it can just ignore it and keep his criticism to himself, for I will neither look at nor listen to it. They do not have to answer for or bear responsibility for my translation. Listen up, I shall say “gracious Mary” and “dear Mary”, and they can say “Mary full of grace”. Anyone who knows German also knows what an expressive word “dear” (liebe) is: dear Mary, dear God, the dear emperor, the dear prince, the dear man, the dear child. I do not know if one can say this word liebe in Latin or in other languages with so much depth of emotion that it pierces the heart and echoes throughout as it does in our tongue.
I think that St. Luke, as a master of the Hebrew and Greek tongues, wanted to clarify and articulate the Greek word κεχαριτωμένη that the angel used. And I think that the angel Gabriel spoke with Mary just as he spoke with Daniel, when he called him חֲמֻד֛וֹת and אִישׁ־חֲמֻד֛וֹת, vir desiriorum, that is “Dear Daniel.” That is the way Gabriel speaks, as we can see in Daniel. Now if I were to literally translate the words of the angel, and use the skills of these asses, I would have to translate it as “Daniel, you man of desires” or “Daniel, you man of lust”. Oh, that would be beautiful German! A German would, of course, recognize Man, Lueste and begirunge as being German words, although not altogether pure as lust and begir would be better. But when those words are put together you get “you man of desires” and no German is going to understand that. He might even think that Daniel is full of lustful desires. Now wouldn’t that be a fine translation! So I have to let the literal words go and try to discover how the German says what the Hebrew חֲמֻד֛וֹת expresses. I discover that the German says this, “You dear Daniel,” “you dear Mary,” or “you gracious maiden,” “you lovely maiden,” “you gentle girl,” and so on. A translator must have a large vocabulary so he can have more words for when a particular one just does not fit in the context.
From Martin Luther’s “An Open Letter on Translating.”
