I just looked up the translation of the German expression jemanden zur Rede stellen. The one translation for that expression I found was to take someone to task.
I use the German expression to describe a situation where you ask someone to justify himself/herself. It usually (but not necessarily) involves a feeling of stress to the person who is asked, because he/she has to justify a decision or action. When this expression is used, it often involves an uncomfortable atmosphere.
The confusion stems from the English expression, which in my opinion would literally mean that I take someone and assign to him a task. While in German it is more like you make someone talk, in English it seems to mean to make someone do a task.
Where does that expression come from?
When can it be used the way I described it for German? I.e. to ask someone questions/make someone justify himself/herself.
Best Answer
In English, to take someone to task means to reprimand them, that is, to criticize their failure of responsibility, which seems fairly close to the German usage, at least in the discomfort to the reprimanded party. But it doesn't necessarily contain the sense of asking for justification. For that you have to demand an explanation.
When you want to make somebody do something, you assign or give a task to him.
"Take" has a general meaning of seize or hold, and the OED records an old usage from 1250 of "take someone" meaning the modern locution of "take someone to task." Three hundred years later, "take someone to task" had the meaning of assign someone a task, but some time after the 1650s, this usage become obsolete, superseded by the old ancient meaning of reprimand.