In another thread pmda presented this sentence:
Medium erat in Anco ingenium, et Numae et Romuli memor.
I often stumble over short sentences like this.
Is there a set of exercises on tackling short sentences?
I don’t know if this is what your looking for but Wright’s First Latin Steps has hundreds (thousands?) of short sentences.
You could try reading Seneca or Tacitus who are authors that frequently express themselves in highly compressed ways.
First you have to believe that the sentence makes sense. Second you have to understand that the thought that underlies what has been written in Latin would be naturally expressed in English in a very different way. Before translating anything decide what the verb is, what is subject and what is the object. You have to work out the structure without reference to English. If you try to translate without understanding the structure you will end up guessing and trying to fit the Latin to what you think the English is. Reading Latin is not a crossword puzzle.
I hate pop music but did find it helpful translating beetle’s songs into Latin. If it’s successful Latin when you turn it back into English the lyrics would be quite different.
Translate the thought not the words. Of course a more literal approach is helpful as a staging post but you always have to ask yourself what does the text mean which is a different question to how do I express it in English.
Thanks to seneca and shenoute for the suggestions on difficult short sentences.