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: in the home, the children on the street, the common person in the
market about this. We must be guided by their tongue, the manner
of their speech, and do our translating accordingly. Then they
will understand it and recognize that we are speaking German to
them.
For instance, Christ says: Ex abundatia cordis os loquitur. If I
am to follow these asses, they will lay the original before me
literally and translate it as: "Out of the abundance of the heart
the mouth speaks." Is that speaking with a German tongue? What
German could understand something like that? What is this
"abundance of the heart?" No German can say that; unless, of
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