Book excerpt: Understanding idiomatic expressions is vital for gaining fluency in a second language. Both English-speaking students of German and German-speaking students of English will find this dictionary invaluable for improving their conversational skill when speaking in their second language. They'll discover that the book also comes in handy as quick word finder when they read popular newspapers or magazines in the second language. Updated to keep pace with current idioms, this two-part phrasebook translates 2001 expressions from German to English and from English to German. All entries are illustrated with sample sentences. Two fast-reference word-finder indexes are also featured--one following the German section, and the other following the English section.