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text. His was a 'sense for sense' translation. (Khulusi, 1982, pp12-
13)
The Reformation, conceived in Germany wherefrom it spread far and
wide, abounded in numerous translations of the Scriptures. Martin
Luther translated the New Testament into German. His most laudable
contribution to Bible translating lies in the emphasis he lays on the
intelligibility of the translated text. Even in the most heated and
intense theological controversies, the intelligibility and
communicability of the translated message should not be impaired or
overshadowed. His contention was that the Bible was no longer the
sacred territory where ecclesiastical scholastics only did not fear to
tread. On the contrary, it should be easily accessible to all
Christians, the lettered and the unlettered alike. The guidelines
along which Luther produced his translation of the New Testament are
summarized by Nida (1964, p15) as follows: "(1) shifts of word order;
(2) employment of modal auxiliaries; (3) introduction of connectives
where these were required; (4) suppression of Greek or Hebrew terms
which had no acceptable equivalent in German; (5) the use of phrases
where necessary to translate single words in the original; (6) shifts
of metaphors to non-metaphors and vice versa; (7) careful attention to
exergetical accuracy and textual variants."
Etienne Dolet, a studious classicist and a political
controversialist, enumerates the fundamentals of translation as
follows: "(1) the translator must understand carefully the content and
intention of the author whom he is translating; (2) the translator
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