A lot of times, I notice that things are worded differently in German than they would be in English. If you translate word for word, the resulting German sentence is awkward.
One case of this seems to be to "finish" something in English. I've spent a little time trying to find an equivalent German word, but it doesn't seem to exist, at least not exactly.
I've heard it is usually translated as "fertig machen", but I don't really see how that works in all cases.
For example: How would you translate the sentence "I finished reading the novel." to German?
My try:
Ich habe den Roman fertig gemacht zu lesen.
I can't imagine that is correct.