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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: 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
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