If you've read the title and realized this applies to you, I must commend you on your courage. It is incredibly brave of you to go off and have to deal with little to no knowledge of the words around you.
Now luckily I've been fortunate to have taken German for years, both at high school and university. If possible, I would recommend finding German/Whatever language courses, but it can be tough to fit those in last minute.
Thankfully due to modern technology, there are a lot of apps you can get your phone that can help you learn a language. My personal favorite is Duolingo, which is easily found in the app store. It gives you certain word categories, such as groceries or clothing, as well as grammar structures. It encourages you to practice every day to strengthen your skills, and review categories that have weakened. It also accesses your microphone so you can practice saying the words out loud. I highly recommend this app but make sure you keep up with it!
There's also a lot of websites that help you look up certain words you may be struggling with. I recommend leo.de because it's proven to be the most accurate in specific words. Google translate fails to be grammatically correct, so I would recommend avoiding it as much as possible. You can obviously use Google translate to get the meaning out of the sentence you're struggling with, but I wouldn't recommend using it for any German assignments you have to do.
Here are some of the most important German phrases (in my opinion) that you should definitely try to learn:
Danke: thank you. this is super important because it's always good to know how to say thank you. you can make it more kinder by saying danke schön, which roughly translates to "thank you very much"
Bitte: this means "please" in most contexts, and "you're welcome" in others (usually if it's following "danke" then it's "you're welcome")
Ich spreche kein Deutsch: this translates to "I don't speak any German". This will be very helpful if someone comes up to you speaking German, and you aren't sure what they're saying
Sprechen Sie Englisch?: this translates to "Do you speak English?". This is the more formal contraction of the sentence because it's kinder to be too polite than informal. This is especially helpful if you are trying to speak to a cashier or some one in a shop or something
The most important thing when it comes to speaking German is to try to speak in spite of mistakes. I've been held back by too many fears about speaking wrong that I never felt I improved until I had to take that risk. For the most part, you'll be happy that you did.
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