How come when I learn a new english word, I could here it and immediately understand what it means. But when I hear a word in a different language that I’m learning, like Japanese, I have to translate the word in my head instead of just understanding the meaning. Even with spanish, which I’ve grown up speaking, I have trouble keeping up with things since I translate a bit in my head. Also how do i stop head translating?
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IME there’s nothing wrong with translating in your head if you don’t need it – as long as you don’t get distracted by it it’s fine. Often when you’re learning new languages, though, you learn vocabulary by reference to a language you already speak – so you learn e.g. ‘食べる means “eat”‘. This means that for a while, your brain only knows the Japanese word by reference to the English word, and thus any attempt to decode that word or produce an utterance using it has to go through English. It’s often better to bypass that connection with English and just learn to connect 食べる with the concept of eating directly. With enough practice your brain learns to do that anyway, but you’ll never be able to speak or understand at a fluent speed if you’re always going through some other language first.
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