A Keg full of Beer, a Purse full of Money

The publication of the Bible in everyday language stuck a chord throughout German speaking lands. For the first time in history, middle class families could afford to own a Bible and one they could read with their children! The investment was about what a modern American household spends on a car. Even his opponents recognized the high literary quality of its phrases and sound. Luther translated so it sounded good read out loud. Where his enemies faulted him was where he changed Greek and Hebrew figures of speech and added words not in the original texts to make the result sound like a German wrote it.

While in Coburg Castle waiting for the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, Luther wrote a letter now known as On Translating. In it he explained his method. The goal was to be faithful to the meaning of the original text while making it understandable in German. This is a very difficult thing to do. Translate idioms word for word and it will sound like nonsense. Here is how Luther describes what happens when you translate that way the greeting of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary:

When the angel greets Mary, he says, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” (Luke 1:28) … When does a German speak like that, “You are full of grace”? What German understands what that is, to be “full of grace”? He would have to think of a keg “full of” beer or a purse “full of” money. Therefore I have translated it, “Thou gracious one,” so that a German can at least think his way through to what the angel meant by this greeting … Suppose I had taken the best German, and translated the salutation thus: “Hello there, Mary!”
Martin Luther, On Translating, AE 35:190-191

So the Reformer picked words and figures of speech common in spoken German. No, he didn’t go as far as translate: “Hello, Mary!” He wrote: “Greetings, blessed one!” When Luther translated this way, he overturned much ancient churchly language. Over the centuries the words of translations obscured the gospel and the new translation brought to everyone the discoveries he found when studying the Scripture in their original language. It touched hearts, changed the way people spoke to each other and created in a few short years a standard form of the language. More than anything else, Luther taught scholars to translate and translations that follow were better for it.