An Open Letter on Translating | Page 4

translation. They know it less than even the miller's donkey for they have never tried it.
It is said, "The one who builds along the pathway has many masters." It is like this with me. Those who have not ever been able to speak correctly (to say nothing of translating) have all at once become my masters and I their pupil. If I were to have asked them how to translate the first two words of Matthew "Liber Generationis" into German, not one of them would have been able to say "Quack!" And they judge all my works! Fine fellows! It was also like this for St. Jerome when he translated the Bible. Everyone was his master. He alone was entirely incompetent as people, who were not good enough to clean his boots, judged his works. This is why it takes a great deal of patience to do good things in public for the world believes itself to be the Master of Knowledge, always putting the bit under the horse's tail, and not judging itself for that is the world's nature. It can do nothing else.
I would gladly see a papist come forward and translate into German an epistle of St. Paul's or one of the prophets and, in doing so, not make use of Luther's German or translation. Then one might see a fine, beautiful and noteworthy translation into German.
We have seen that bungler from Dresden play master to my New Testament. (I will not mention his name in my books as he has his judge and is already well- known). He does admit that my German is good and sweet and that he could not improve it. Yet, anxious to dishonor it, he took my New Testament word for word as it was written, and removed my prefaces and glosses, replacing them with his own. Then he published my New Testament under his name! Dear Children, how it pained me when his prince in a detestable preface condemned my work and forbid all from reading Luther's New Testament, while at the same time commending the Bungler's New Testament to be read - even though it was the very same one Luther had written!
So no one thinks I am lying, put Luther's and the Bungler's New Testaments side by side and compare them. You will see who did the translation for both. He has patched it in places and reordered it (and although it does not all please me) I can still leave it be for it does me no particular harm as far as the document is concerned. That is why I never intended to write in opposition to it. But I did have a laugh at the great wisdom that so terribly slandered, condemned and forbade my New Testament, when it was published under my name, but required its reading when published under an other's name! What type of virtue is this that slanders and heaps shame on someone else's work, and then steals it, and publishes it under one's own name, thereby seeking glory and esteem through the slandered work of someone else! I leave that for his judge to say. I am glad and satisfied that my work (as St. Paul also boasts ) is furthered by my enemies, and that Luther's work, without Luther's name but that of his enemy, is to be read. What better vengeance?!
Returning to the issue at hand, if your Papist wishes to make a great fuss about the word "alone" (sola), say this to him: "Dr. Martin Luther will have it so and he says that a papist and an ass are the same thing." Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas. (I will it, I command it; my will is reason enough) For we are not going to become students and followers of the papists. Rather we will become their judge and master. We, too, are going to be proud and brag with these blockheads; and just as St. Paul brags against his madly raving saints, I will brag over these asses of mine! They are doctors? Me too. They are scholars? I am as well. They are philosophers? And I. They are dialecticians? I am too. They are lecturers? So am I. They write books? So do I.
I will go even further with my bragging: I can exegete the psalms and the prophets, and they cannot. I can translate, and they cannot. I can read Holy Scriptures, and they cannot. I can pray, they cannot. Coming down to their level, I can do their dialectics and philosophy better than all of them put together. Plus I know that not one of them understands Aristotle. If, in fact, any one of them can correctly understand one part or chapter of Aristotle, I will eat my hat! No, I