Not really. Even today scholars are able to go back to the original languages (many are experts in them) and develop translations that fit modern usage. The Douay-Rheims Bible, with extensive revisions later by Bishop Challoner, wasn't done until the sixteenth - seventeenth centuries and it was a translation from the Latin Vulgate into English (a translation of a translation). Jerome was not an expert in Hebrew when he began to create the Vulgate and he insisted on translating most of the Old Testament from the Hebrew and not the Greek Septuagint:
In 385, Jerome was forced out of Rome, and eventually settled in Bethlehem, where he was able to use a surviving manuscript of the Hexapla, likely from the nearby Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima, a columnar comparison of the variant versions of the Old Testament undertaken 150 years before by Origen. Jerome first embarked on a revision of the Psalms, translated from the revised Septuagint Greek column of the Hexapla, which later came to be called the Gallican version. He also appears to have undertaken further new translations into Latin from the Hexaplar Septuagint column for other books. But from 390 to 405, Jerome translated anew from the Hebrew all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further version of the Psalms. This new translation of the Psalms was labelled by him as "iuxta Hebraeos" (i.e. "close to the Hebrews", "immediately following the Hebrews"), and was commonly found in the Vulgate, until it was widely replaced by his Gallican psalms beginning in the 9th century.
The Vulgate is usually credited as being the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew Tanakh, rather than the Greek Septuagint. Jerome's extensive use of exegetical material written in Greek, on the other hand, as well as his use of the Aquiline and Theodotiontic columns of the Hexapla, along with the somewhat paraphrastic style in which he translated makes it difficult to determine exactly how direct the conversion of Hebrew to Latin was.[4][5][6]
As Jerome completed his translations of each book of the Bible, he recorded his observations and comments in an extensive correspondence with other scholars; and these letters were subsequently collected and appended as prologues to the Vulgate text for those books where they survived. In these letters, Jerome described those books or portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical: he called them apocrypha.[7] Jerome's views did not, however, prevail; and all complete manuscripts and editions of the Vulgate include some or all these books. Of the Old Testament texts not found in the Hebrew, Jerome translated Tobit and Judith anew from the Aramaic; and from the Greek, the additions to Esther from the Septuagint, and the additions to Daniel from Theodotion. Other books; Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Maccabees[8] are variously found in Vulgate manuscripts with texts derived from the Old Latin; sometimes together with Latin versions of other texts found neither in the Hebrew Bible, nor in the Septuagint, 4 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasses and Laodiceans. Their style is still markedly distinguishable from Jerome's. In the Vulgate text, Jerome's translations from the Greek of the additions to Esther and Daniel are combined with his separate translations of these books from the Hebrew.
A recurring theme of the Old Testament prologues is Jerome's preference for the Hebraica veritas (i.e., Hebrew truth) to the Septuagint, a preference which he defended from his detractors. He stated that the Hebrew text more clearly prefigures Christ than the Greek. Among the most remarkable of these prologues is the Prologus Galeatus, in which Jerome described an Old Testament canon of 22 books, which he found represented in the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet. Alternatively, he numbered the books as 24, which he described as the 24 elders in the Book of Revelation casting their crowns before the Lamb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate
So, Martin Luther, along with several colleagues - including Erasmus, were trained in Hebrew, Greek and Latin and they translated the entire Bible into the German vernacular using, probably, the same resources Jerome may have (i.e.; the Masoretic text). I think we may be having a semantics issue here. A translation is not necessarily an entirely NEW interpretation each time it is attempted. Luther did not act alone in his work to produce the work he did and he continued to revise and perfect it throughout the rest of his life as vernacular changed and words evolved - much like is STILL done today.
My disagreement with NL was not centered around Jerome but on his insistence that Luther spent too little time, in his estimation, to produce a satisfactory enough work without adding his own "slant" and misinterpretations. He reasoned Luther must have skipped necessary "leg work" to have been able to do a complete enough job even though the sources I gave stated he worked on the New Testament for a year and completed the entire Bible after another 12 years (including modifications and corrections). Again, he was not the only one working on this project and he had multiple resources to assist him. I only brought up Jerome to address the imbalance of criticism directed at Luther's presumed "haste" when Jerome hurriedly translated the books he did not consider canonical into the Latin Vulgate.
Of course, this argument was but a sideline/diversion from the actual argument which was that Luther supposedly removed certain books from "his" German translation of the Bible. Luther did not do that, but no proof seems good enough for those who refuse to let go of the few remaining arrows they think they have to take down "Protestantism".
I appreciate your comments.
Modern translators have never actually heard these languages, and I don’t see how they could possibilty have the same intimacy with these tongues. It’s like a modern screenwriter trying to guess how Jefferson actually spoke in conversation. That said. Luther ’s true genius was not as an accurate translator but as a writer of the German language. To read some of the earlier translations and then to read Luther is to suddenly encounter genius of the first order, and religious inspiration as well as genius as a writer. He’s a poet, and it just flows.