Deutsch

I wish someone had told me, as a second semester sophomore, that I ought to have taken German IV.  Because the graduate school I now attend requires two full years of a college-level foreign language, which I don’t have.  So either I have to take German IV, five years later, or I have to pass a translation exam.

The translation exam is 400-500 words long.  I will have two (or, according to some documents, three) hours.  I may supply my own dictionary or dictionaries.  It is pass/fail.  The test is offered once a semester, in this case on February 25.

So for the next few weeks I will be spending about an hour a day on my German.  I’ve already supplied myself with an easy textbook to bolster my courage, an intermediate textbook to deflate it, and a book on German verbs.  I am about to run by the bookstore for the Oxford German Dictionary, and I have already begun the search for my Langenscheidt dictionary (however, of which I begin to despair).  In addition to translating from my intermediate textbook, I will be working on a children’s novel, German Wikipedia articles, and, perhaps, a bit of Kafka or the Grimm brothers.

Note to self:  I don’t have to be fluent, or even proficient.  I only have to pass.