English Translation
It’s part of the job.
Hello all,
Is “dazu” referring to some piece of information / bit of context we do not have here? If so, would “Das gehört zur Arbeit.” be valid on its own?
Surprise! It’s the “separable verb” trap again.
The verb is “dazugehören”, which is the right choice here in order to translate “to be part of”.
Das gehört zur Arbeit dazu. - It’s part of the job.
Das gehört zur Arbeit. - It belongs to the job. (Both german and english sound off, don’t they?)
You could actually translate more literally and say “Das ist Teil der Arbeit”, which is also fine, but I feel “gehört dazu” is more idiomatic.
Edit:
If I was to tell the difference between “Teil der Arbeit” and “gehört dazu”, I’d say that “Teil der Arbeit” is more neutral, like “this is what the job encompasses”, while “das gehört dazu” gives that “you don’t get to only do the fun part. You have to do the tedious part, too” vibe.
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Surprise indeed!
I like surprises as much as the next guy, but I’m afraid this example belongs to my “sentences that bother me” list.
That’s funny… The English version sounds off to me, but that’s because I know it’s wrong and that’s probably why both versions sound off to you, because you just know they are 
I mean, if our example sentence had been “Das gehört zur Arbeit” and you had told me that this was indeed the way German speakers convey the “it’s part of the job” meaning, I would have been OK with it
After reading your explanation, I found this example:
Bei der Reisegesellschaft waren einige Leute, die eigentlich nicht dazugehörten.
I’m not sure why, but this example feels just fine to me. My guess is that it’s the combination of zu + dazu that bothers me in the clozemaster sentence, kind of like “mitkommen mit”. That, and the fact that this is the first time I encounter “dazugehören”. If I see/hear it often enough, I’ll get used to it eventually and hopefully even wonder why it ever felt weird to me
Thanks also for the extra bit of info about the “negative connotation” associated with this way of saying “it’s part of the job”.
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this example belongs to my “sentences that bother me” list.
My guess is that it’s the combination of zu + dazu that bothers me in the clozemaster sentence, kind of like “mitkommen mit”.
Yes, it’s exactly the same pidgeonhole. I guess the best advice I can give is “get used to it” 
Wiktionary just has “to belong” for “dazugehören”. I feel that’s kind of too little information, because there’s really two different meanings for the english “to belong” - the let’s call it “association” meaning and the “possession” meaning, and dazugehören is clearly limited to the former meaning.
“gehören” actually also has another meaning which is quite difficult to describe. Wiktionary translates it as “ought to be” in its meaning #5. (gehören - Wiktionary, the free dictionary)
In addition to wiktionary’s examples “Er gehört verhaftet” - “He ought to be arrested”, I’ll actually go out on a limb here and claim that it’s also the core meaning within “dazugehören”.
You see, you could think of “gehören” as “this is where it should be put, where it’s supposed to be, where it wants to go to because that’s its home spot”, or with verbs “this is what should be done with/to it”. There is always a direction involved, or a destination, rather than a static location. An example sentence is “Das Puzzleteil gehört hierhin.” - “The puzzle piece goes here”. “dazu” and “hierhin” are directions. “dazu” can be thought of as “adding to something that’s already there”, so then “dazugehören” literally means “ought to be added / put next to the rest”, which finally explains the “part of” meaning.
I hope this all kind of makes sense. Because maybe it helps to try and get a glimpse into the mindset of a native speaker. Of course, in practice, you can just think of it as “belong” and “part of” and be done.
Maybe all my explaining isn’t new to you because in english you can also say “That belongs in a museum” and mean “That should be put into a museum”. But maybe you never looked at it like that, because at least with “Er gehört verhaftet” the analogy fails.
Excuse my unstructured rambling. I’m thinking about this as I write. I hope it helped at least a little bit.
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Imagine doing the laundry, and you’re making two heaps to categorize your dirty laundry: one with white shirts and one with dark shirts. When you sort your shirts, you say “This goes on the white heap, this goes on the dark heap, this goes on the white heap, …”.
In German: “Das gehört zu den weißen Hemden, das gehört zu den dunklen Hemden, etc.” Notice that you don’t use dazu. This is what @pitti42 meant with “to belong somewhere” as the meaning of “gehören” (without dazu).
Similarly, if you want to categorize your invoices/bills into personal paperwork and business-related paperwork: “Diese Rechnung gehört zu meinen privaten Dokumenten, diese Rechnung gehört zu meinen geschäftlichen Dokumenten.”
If you want to say that you can’t have just the good parts, you also have to accept the bad parts, you’d add “dazu”, meaning “it’s (also) part of the job”, as @pitti42 said. For example, you have to take the dog for a walk even when it’s raining or you’re sick. You can’t just play with the dog, you also have to deal with its poop, etc.
- “Das gehört zur Arbeit.” (That’s business-related, as opposed to being a personal matter.)
- “Das gehört zur Arbeit dazu.” (Like it or not, that’s also part of the job.)
As @pitti42 said, “Das gehört zur Arbeit dazu” has a “negative connotation”, used when you want to say that you can’t just pick the best parts, you have to take the entire package. For a job description, when listing all responsibilities (“As a programmer, you will write computer code.”), you’d say “X ist (auch) Teil der Arbeit”, not “X gehört zur Arbeit dazu”.
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Oh yes, it does! That approach “makes” perfect sense to me, because as you said, it helps
Indeed, it isn’t new and in fact, I think that’s why “Das gehört zur Arbeit.” didn’t feel all that wrong to me.
Even here, I think “He belongs in jail” does work quite well.
I dare say, more than a little bit
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Right! I think this is what I had in mind when I first read this example and why I was wondering about the “added” dazu in this particular case.
Nice! Earlier I was thinking about how to best translate this “negative connotation” into English and I too thought about “also part of the job”.
This makes a lot more sense to me already and all the examples you both provided help a lot.
Thanks guys!
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