IE-4
suGGested translatIons
for Übungssätze
Kapitel 1
1. Earth has seven continents: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North
America, South America, and the Antarctic. How many students
are studying geography?
2. Germany lies in Europe. It has nine neighboring countries. The
capital is Berlin.
3. Munich is a beautiful, old city in southern Germany. It is the capital
of Bavaria.
4. Austria is also a very beautiful country. The language in Austria is
German. –What’s the name of Austria’s capital? –It’s called Vienna.
5. –When were you in Vienna, Ms. Motyl? –I was in Vienna this summer.
It’s a fantastic city. My mother and I were often at the opera.
6. I’m studying art history and architecture. Oskar Kokoschka was
a famous Austrian artist. Otto Wagner was a great/top-ranking
Viennese architect.
7. The Max Planck Society (MPG1) has sixty-four (64) institutes. The
MPG is relatively new. It was founded in 1948, but today it is very
famous for chemistry and biology.
8. –Who was Max Planck? –He was a famous German physicist.
Physics is a natural science.
9. The universities in Germany are good. Some are also very old.
10. The University of Heidelberg is very old. In 1986 the university was
600 years old. It is, of course, located in Heidelberg.
11. The students at the University of Heidelberg study sciences,
politics, history, philosophy, music, art, and religion, but also
English studies and German studies [also: English philology and
German philology]. What are you studying? [Also: What do you
study?]
12. I’m studying philosophy. Plato and Socrates were philosophers.
They were Greeks. My friend is studying religion. He reads [also:
He’s reading] the Koran and the Bible.
13. English philology is the study of English literature, for example,
Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet was a Danish prince. The play is a
tragedy.
14. “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Hamlet, V.1.
15. German philology is the study of German language, literature, and
culture. The best book (written) by Goethe is Faust.
1 “MPG” stands for the German “Max-Planck-Gesellschaft”
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Kapitel 2
1. A year has twelve months, fifty-two weeks, and three hundred sixty-
five days. A week has seven days and a day has twenty-four hours.
2. –How much money do you have, Hans? –I have little money [also: I
don’t have much money], but I work a whole lot. We all work a lot.
3. “Work and Life” is the name of a social organization. The organization
finds work for young people and activities for older people.
4. Germany has many good universities. I’m thinking, for example,
about the Free University in Berlin or about the Universities of
Freiburg, Göttingen, Heidelberg, and Konstanz. They are called
“German elite universities.”
5. Some students are studying German. Hanna is studying Spanish, and
she learns very rapidly. –What do you all study? Are you studying
English, Spanish, or German? –My friends are studying history, but
I’m studying geography and environmental protection.
6. The Galapagos Islands are an interesting group of islands off
the coast of Ecuador in South America. The flora and fauna (the
plants and animals) are an ecological phenomenon, and UNESCO
considers Galapagos a “biosphere reserve.”
7. The biologist is writing a new book about European animals.
Of course, the book is called Animals in Europe. One important
topic is: “Mankind changes the environment, and the environment
changes mankind.”
8. Now, we’ll look at a concrete example. Open the book!
9. –Do you know the book? [Also: –Are you familiar with the book?]
–Do you know the author? –No, I don’t know the author personally,
but I know that his name is Günther Grass. He was the 1999 Nobel
Prize laureate for literature.
10. The Swedish Academy in Stockholm selects the Nobel Prize recipients
for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.
The Academy likewise selects the prize recipient for economy.
11. In 1995, the Nobel Prize recipient for medicine and physiology
was the German professor Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. She is the
director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in
Tübingen.
12. Seven hundred people from nearly fifty countries work at the Max
Planck institutes for developmental biology, biological cybernetics,
and intelligent systems. The Max Planck House is a center for
families: It has an auditorium and a library, but also has a café and a
playground for kids.
Kapitel 3
1. We’re living in the 21st century. A century is a time period of one
hundred years.
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2. Bertolt Brecht was born at the end of the 19th century and
revolutionized the German theater in the 20th century. In 1929,
Brecht explained, for example, the V-effect. “V” stands for
“alienation” [Verfremdung]. The V-effect destroys illusions.
3. Brecht’s famous teaching regarding the V-effect states: The actor
plays a role, but he doesn’t identify himself with the role. This
distance of the actor breaks the illusion and facilitates the alienation
of the viewer.
4. The inventor of the four-stroke engine was the German merchant
Nikolaus Otto. The motor is now known as the “Otto engine.”
5. The invention of the Otto engine led to the development of the
automobile industry and influenced the history of the 20th century.
The invention of the automobile also had an important economical
influence on world politics.
6. The American chemist and nuclear scientist Glenn Seaborg
discovered plutonium in 1941. In 1951, Seaborg received the
Nobel Prize in chemistry for his contribution to the isolation of
transuranic elements.
7. The committee in Stockholm recognized Seaborg together with the
physicist Edwin McMillan “for their discoveries in the chemistry of
transuranic elements.”
8. Frederick the Second, King of Prussia, was known in the 18th
century as “Frederick the Great,” but also as “Old Fritz.”
9. The great ruler and king is known for his sayings. He said, for example:
“The sovereign is the primary servant of the state,” but also: “Few
people think, but [nonetheless] all of them want to decide.”
10. The first part of the book deals with the First World War. The
second part deals with the consequences of the world war and the
Weimar Republic.
11. At the time of the Roman Empire, the Romans occupied many
parts of Europe. One finds the influence of the Romans everywhere
there. [Also: The influence of the Romans can be found all over the
place.]
12. The Roman mosaic from the third century AD depicting scenes
from the world of Dionysus, for example, is a well-known work
found in the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne.
Kapitel 4
1. “The social standing of women is a measurement of the civilization of
a people.” [Also: “The level of civilization of a people is measured by
the social standing of women.] (Domingo F. Sarmiento, 1811–1888,
Argentina) The right to vote for women has existed in Germany and
Austria since 1919, and in Switzerland since 1971. Women have voted
in Argentina since 1947.
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2. Suffrage rights for women in the USA began with the nineteenth
amendment to the constitution (August 1920). Only three months
after amending the law [also: after the amendment of the law], male
and female American voters elected William G. Harding as president.
3. My article in the professional journal Swiss Aids News describes our
new experimental results and their significance for AIDS research.
4. Your co-worker at the research center confirmed my results. He
and his colleagues investigated the T-cells’ reactions.
5. The Talmud contains the teachings and laws of the Jewish worship
service, laws regarding the lifestyle of the Jewish people, and
historical, geographic, and mathematic teachings.
6. In her book, Letters from Africa, the Danish author Tania Blixen
writes about the colonial period and describes the continent
through the eyes of a European. The critics find her descriptions of
the political situation extremely Eurocentric.
7. In present-day Africa there are many relatively new countries, for
example, Zimbabwe, Botswana, or Namibia. The name of the country
Namibia comes from the world’s oldest desert, the Namib. In the
colonial period the country was called “German South-West Africa.”
8. The book also contains a short description of the country’s linguistic
policies. The official language in Namibia is English, but there are
also numerous national languages, for example: German, Afrikaans,
OshiKwanyama, OshiNdonga, Khoekhoegowab, RuKwangali,
OtjiHerero, SiLozi, and !Kung.
9. We alter our environment not only through our actions, but also
through our inactions. The people of all the countries of the world
play crucial roles in the changes to our environment today.
10. The amount of precipitation in the mountains adds up to over a
thousand millimeters. The first snow of winter also falls there.
11. The website describes a biologist’s research on the cuckoo in
northern Germany. The birds breed here from mid May until the
beginning or middle of August. Then they leave the dunes on the
North Sea and migrate across the equator.
12. The cuckoo is a breeding parasite. The female bird lays its eggs in
nests of other birds. The cuckoo egg is larger than the other eggs
in the nest. Many birds notice the cuckoo egg and remove it. If,
however, it remains in the nest, the other little birdies haven’t a
chance. The young cuckoo throws the eggs of its foster parents out
of their nest, and they feed the adopted offspring until it flies away
from the nest.
Kapitel 5
1. The First Book of Moses begins “In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void,
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and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be
light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good;
God divided the light from the darkness, and called the light day,
and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning
became the first day.
2. The two cities—Magdeburg and Halle—were important centers in
the Middle Ages. The former was an imperial and ecclesiastical city;
the latter was a city that produced salt. Both cities still play a big/
major role in the political life of the region today.
3. In 1990 Magdeburg became the state capital of Saxony–Anhalt.
Before the fall of the Wall (1989) Halle was the capital of this
eastern state.
4. Martin Luther (1483–1546) lived and died in the neighboring city
of Eisleben. He nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg
castle church in 1517.
5. The well-known Cranach family of painters also worked in
Wittenberg in the 16th century. Cranach the Elder created religious
paintings, as for example Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1504).
6. In the art of the Renaissance, the representation of the human
being and its [also: human beings and their] environment moved
into the foreground. The beauty of the human body became
important.
7. In the last decades of the twentieth century, psychologists at an
American university investigated theories about egoism and self-
love. Their “Narcissistic Personality” test contained questions like:
“How many mirrors are hanging in my apartment?” or: “Do I like
to be the center of attention?” The researchers noticed a strong
tendency toward narcissism.
8. The number of inhabitants in California increased very rapidly in
the last decades. Such growth brought about some complicated
social developments.
9. This problem’s solution is difficult, but not impossible. After every
experiment the researcher wrote the results in his notebook.
10. In 1933, Alfred Einstein became a professor at Princeton University.
He didn’t explain all the details of his theories to his students. Some
theories, as for example, his “world formula”—also called “the theory
of everything”—were simply too complicated for the students.
Kapitel 6
1. For a long time there was a German Empire in name only. During
the 19th and 20th centuries, one differentiates three periods in
the history of the German Empire: The monarchy of the German
Empire (1871–1918), the pluralistic democracy of the Weimar
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Republic (1919–1933) and the totalitarian dictatorship of the
National Socialist Party (1933–1945).
2. The ruler of a kingdom is called a king. Louis XIV of France was
called the “Sun King.”
3. The earth orbits around the sun in one year. Three and a half
centuries ago Galileo Galilei became a heretic in the eyes of the
church, since he declared that the earth orbited around the sun, not
the sun around the earth as was believed back then.
4. According to a new report, the Federal Republic today shows
a strong interest in medical research. For this reason, the
government is supporting the financing of a new research center.
Someone from the government opined: “Our country has always
needed this center.” The opposition criticizes the plan and finds
hardly any reason to support the center.
5. According to a famous French composer, in the music world today
one needs not only perseverance but also talent. For anyone without
perseverance, talent is seldom enough.
6. Young musicians often think too much about genius and talent. For
a talented musician, there are always possibilities, but, as they say,
“practice makes perfect.”
7. The economic and political situation of the nation is hopeless. For
that reason, a revolution is, in my opinion, unavoidable.
8. Following such a total war, the reconstruction of the economy
needs not only the good will of the victor but likewise a great
amount of capital [also: very much capital]. The Americans named
the economic plan for Europe after the Second World War “the
Marshall Plan” after the Secretary of State and Nobel Peace
laureate George Marshall.
9. In the case of such socioeconomic processes, the costs for
reconstruction of homes alone amount to countless millions of
dollars. Sixteen European nations received about 12.4 billion
U.S. dollars from 1948 to 1951 under the auspices [also: in the
framework] of the Marshall Plan.
10. Because of [also: Thanks to] the Marshall Plan, financial support
for countless war victims was possible at that time. According to the
regulations the aid organizations supported not only kindergartens
but also institutions for disabled people. It is hardly possible to think
about the current situation in Europe without thinking of the Marshall
Plan.
Kapitel 7
1. Gustav Mahler was a composer of the late romantic period. After
his Eighth Symphony, Mahler composed “The Song of the Earth.”
It is a symphony for alto, tenor, and a large orchestra.
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2. In 1902, Mahler met and married Alma Schindler. Four years after
Mahler’s death, Alma married the architect Walter Gropius. The poet
Franz Werfel was Alma Mahler’s third husband.
3. The Mahler-Werfel family bought a house in Venice in 1922. For
several years there has been a hotel in “Casa Mahler” and a couple
years ago there was a theater extravaganza in the “Palazzo Zenobio”
about Alma’s life.
4. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a lot being
said and written about the great German mystic Jakob Böhme. The
scholar lived from 1575 to 1624. Besides the Bible, Böhme himself
had read only a few mystical texts.
5. The Luther Bible is a translation of the Old and New Testaments
of the Bible from [the] ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and/or ancient
Greek [languages] into [the] German [language]. With his
translation of the Bible, Luther had rendered a great service to the
German language.
6. A Turkish student in Germany reports: “In a very devout Muslim
family, the word of the patriarch is a type of law. The foreign
environment in the new homeland, Germany, hasn’t changed this
law.” At the end of the report he said: “My father always has the last
word.”
7. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels authored The Communist
Manifesto in 1848. Engels had met Marx in Paris in 1844.
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