Now when the angel greets Mary, he says: "Greetings to you, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you." Well up to this point, this has simply been translated from the simple Latin, but tell me is that good German? Since when does a German speak like that--being "full of grace"? One would have to think about a keg "full of" beer or a purse "full of" money. So I translated it: "You gracious one". This way a German can at last think about what the angel meant by his greeting. Yet the papists rant about me corrupting the angelic greeting--and I still have not used the most satisfactory German translation. What if I had used the most satisfactory German and translated the salutation: "God says hello, Mary dear" (for that is what the angel was intending to say and what he would have said had he even been German!). If I had, I believe that they would have hanged themselves out of their great devotion to dear Mary and because I have destroyed the greeting. Yet why should I be concerned about their ranting and raving? I will not stop them from translating as they want. But I too shall translate as I want and not to please them, and whoever does not like it can just ignore it and keep his criticism to himself, for 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.