Compressing Academic German
In scientific and academic writing, German prefers compact sentences. You will frequently need to transform full relative clauses into extended participle attributes—the descriptive "sandwich" structure we built in the previous lesson.
Passive Actions: Past Participles
When a relative clause describes something that was done to a noun (passive voice), use the past participle.
To compress the sentence, drop the relative pronoun and the helper verb. Move the past participle directly in front of the noun, give it the appropriate adjective ending, and pull any extra details (like time or place) in front of it.
| The researchers evaluate the experiment which has been conducted yesterday. | Die Forscher werten das Experiment aus, das gestern durchgeführt worden ist. |
| The researchers evaluate the experiment conducted yesterday. | Die Forscher werten das gestern durchgeführte Experiment aus. |
Active Actions: Present Participles
When the noun is actively doing something, use a present participle. You form this by simply adding -d to the infinitive of the verb (e.g., beeinflussen becomes beeinflussend).
Just like before, drop the relative pronoun, move the new participle in front of the noun with an adjective ending, and sandwich the object or details between the article and the participle.
| We observe the factor which influences the phenomenon. | Wir beobachten den Faktor, der das Phänomen beeinflusst. |
| We observe the factor influencing the phenomenon. | Wir beobachten den das Phänomen beeinflussenden Faktor. |
Here is another active example. Notice how the entire object (die Daten) moves into the attribute block:
| The algorithm which evaluates the data must be efficient. | Der Algorithmus, der die Daten auswertet, muss effizient sein. |
| The algorithm evaluating the data must be efficient. | Der die Daten auswertende Algorithmus muss effizient sein. |
Unpacking Dense Texts
When reading academic texts, these extended attributes can get incredibly long. To translate or fully grasp the sentence, you will often need to do the reverse: mentally unpack the attribute back into a relative clause.
To do this, identify the participle before the noun, convert it back into a conjugated verb, and move the "sandwiched" information behind the noun using a relative pronoun.
| The measurement conducted by the expert is exact. | Die vom Experten durchgeführte Messung ist genau. |
| The measurement which was conducted by the expert is exact. | Die Messung, die vom Experten durchgeführt wurde, ist genau. |