Do you eventually translate a language automatically?

Japanese Language
#21

…I know it’s just a dumb joke, but I feel like those bottom two should be switched.

Watching movies and shows in their native languages with a native caption track to help fill in dialogue that’s hard to hear (or hard to catch at speed) is an invaluable learning tool.

Right now if I find a show hard to follow (I’ll usually try sans captions on first pass to gauge how it feels), rather than an English-translated subtitle track, I’ll turn on Japanese captions and be fine. If anything, that’s what I’m currently trying to cut down my reliance on!

Japanese portions of my dreams tend to involve my needing to explain something in a stressful situation to Japanese speakers.

On the one hand, like “Yay, dreaming in a language you’re learning!” On the other, I feel like I should probably examine that.

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#22

o dear.
I am 57.
I definitely do not translate French, German or English, just somehow understand and speak without being aware of it. But I am not optimistic about reaching this level in Japanese…

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#23

Yeah, that’s why I thought it was funny :slight_smile: Not sure what whoever made that image thought, but I felt it becomes even more silly if you make the same claim about English with English subs!

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#24

Well, my mother tongue is Swedish and I would say I’m pretty close to native in English by now (or as close as it gets anyway). It’s not as much as I translate things into english as it is that I’m actually operating in English. Since I’m more or less surrounded by English (thanks to internet), this is now my main language in how I think.

I’m semi-fluent in Japanese as well. I’d say that I’m definitely able to think in Japanese in the same way as in english but it is more limited. Sometimes I just lack the vocabulary or the grammatical construct then my brain fall backs to english and that’s basically what would come out of my mouth instead.

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#25

I think in English all the time, and often struggle talking in my own language; ending up including an English word here and there! :rofl:
Luckily most people know English here, so they understand it =)

I try to think in Japanese at times. Using simple words and phrases, just naming what I see or what I am doing (sometimes I even talk in Japanese to my dogs :wink: )

The words get their own meaning rather than being a “translation”. Especially once you get used to words that don’t translate that well =P

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#26

Sorry, but the irony is just too funny. I assume you’re German.

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#27

If you can read hiragana and katakana without trying then I would say that is what it would sort of feel like being able to speak the language fluently, without having to translate word for word. I could however be really wrong because I definitely still have to translate words into English and have no experience speaking another language ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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#28

How many months of grammar work did it take you to get to that point?

#29

If you can’t do that you haven’t learned the language.

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#30

I think it has little to do with grammar work, it’s more about exposure and immersion. I’ve seen people have amazing grammar knowledge but they can’t comprehend the language quickly or produce much at all.

#31

I never thought of that before. Reading kana seems like second nature now. It just flows and I don’t think about it at all. This actually helped a lot!

#32

Not only read and think in a language, you might even be able to hallucinate in it too! I just had my first experience of sleep paralysis today and my auditory hallucinations were in Japanese :joy:

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#33

That’s weird. Sorry about the sleep paralysis though. Heard that isn’t pleasant at all.

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#34

It was more interesting than scary, to be honest. But I heard most cases are terrifying.

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#35

I don’t expect ever to think in Japanese. But when being in an English environment after a while I started to think and even dream in English.NO translation!

#36

you know you’ve been thinking in japanese when you step on a lego, the world explodes in red and you shout いたっ！

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#37

Its hard to say exactly.

I spend time in the past on tae kims grammar guide,
Watched cure dolly’s videos,
Looking into the overall aspects of the language (You can actually use wikipedia on “japanese grammar” for a pretty good overview)
But i never really applied any of those ressources, and they are a while back so i dont know how much that influences it.

My current grammar study routine is purely Bunpro, but this is just as a tool to initially expose me, and then lots of reading to reinforce it when i see it in action.
I pretty much blazed through N5 and half of N4 in the first few days, mind you this was during the holidays where i barely did anything else than study japanese.
So i think i got to mid N3 after a month or so of that. Theres a weird bump around N3 where things reach the intermediate level and it slows one down, so currently i only do 3 new grammar points per day on bunpro.

I dont expect grammar study to really teach me grammar (I could not explain english grammar even if my life depended on it), but the initial exposure makes things a little less painful.

#38

Not to brag, but I’ve gotten pretty good at translating what I want to say into my native language.

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#39

I even have dreams in English some times, so yes, you eventually will get to the point where you are going to think in your target language, and it looks like that is a skill you can transfer when you are learning a third language, that’s what I found. I’m learning French and it happens that with words and structures I’m familiar with I don’t have to translate them in my mother language.

#40

luckily my sleep paralysis was mostly visually, but that is a really scary thought.

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