I personally feel that German compound words often express much more abstract concepts than their English counterpart. To give a really infamous example: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rindfleischetikettierungs%C3%B...

I'll add hyphens to ease the understanding of this word and also put the s that are epenthesis and thus not important into square brackets.

Rind-fleisch-etikettierung[s]-überwachung[s]-aufgaben-übertragung[s]-gesetz

The first thing to note is that adding an "ung" to the stem of a verb usually means "the abstract process of doing what the verb describes". Even this simply property makes it quite easy to express rather abstract concepts that are quite clumsy in English.

Now we'll decode this word:

Rind: agricultural term for "cow" ("Kuh") fleisch: meat

So Rindlfleisch = "meat of cows" (beef)

"Etikettierung": The German word "Etikette" means "label" (it also has other meanings, but they are not important here). Form this we can derive the word "etikettieren" (to put a label on something). From this verb, as I explained above, you can derive "Etikettierung" - the abstract process of labeling something. What is the something here? Of course the beef.

"Überwachung": The verb "überwachen" means "to supervise" or "to monitor". You know the rules to find out what "Überwachung" means (the abstract process ...). Just one remark for those who are interested: "überwachen" consists of the prefix "über" and the verb "wachen" (to wake, to keep watch).

"Aufgaben": Could be simply translated with "tasks", but this, in my opinion distorts the meaning a little bit. I'll rather divide it into "auf" + "Gabe". "Gabe" is a slightly old-fashinoned word meaning "Something that was given to you by someone else" (derived from the past "gab" of "geben" (to give)). So "Aufgabe" is more correctly translated with "something that was given to you by someone else to do". "Aufgaben" is simply the plural of "Aufgabe".

"Übertragung": The verb "transfer" expresses in my opinion quite the same meaning as "übertragen", since the Latin prexix "trans" corresponds quite well to the prefix "über" as it's used here and the Latin verb "ferre" from which the "fer" in "transfer" is derived means "to carry" (in German: "tragen"). So (you know the rules) "Übertragung" is the abstract process of transfering something. What do we transfer: The answer is clear: The "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgaben".

Gesetz: We could simply use the English word "law", but "Gesetz" is derived from the verb "setzen" (to set). Thus "Gesetz" carries the slight connotation of "something that was set into force by some authority".

Exercise ;-) : How should "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" be translated into English?