One year in and I am very happy with the progress I’ve made. I’ve passed an N4 bunpro practice test which was crazy to me! I know its easier than the real thing, but it really showed me how my effort has been paying off
However, at the moment I’m still needing to constantly translate back and forth for anything that isn’t pre-N5 (essentially anything that’s not __は__です or similar). This means my listening comprehension is especially limited. (I’m not too worried though, my progress isn’t plateauing and I experience less and less “leaching” as time goes on.)
SO! Onto you, tell me about yourself… What was your study style? Was it emersion heavy, or more srs? Do/ did you live in Japan? What JLPT level (or year of study) did your brain start to stop leaching your native language?
Anyone is welcome to answer, no matter your fluency
you (well I) don’t really stop translating, you just get so fast at it you start skipping steps. generally what i find is when you find a word or grammar form you don’t know it boots me out of that unconscious comprehension state and into more explicit translation. But then often there’s times i might understand something but I want to think about how i would express it ‘elegantly’ in English.
when does it happen… I don’t know. immersion, or at least constant practice, really helps. being able to understand eg ペンです is basically step one and you just kind of build from there.
generally i would say n3 onwards you start getting more fluent, especially if you start reading lots of native material
You are N4, but for “not translating”, it’s Pre-N5.
I am N2, and for “not translating”, it’s N3 ish stuff. The newer something is to me, the more likely I’ll have to think and do breakdowns.
In other words, it takes additional time for stuff you’ve learned to become intuitive. It’s not a switch, it’s a gradual separate skill that improves over time.
I think the point you can stop with the bulk of the translating is the point that you fully grasp the primary particles and N3 grammar points. That said, even above this level I still translate individual words all the time. It’s hard to explain but if I don’t know a particular word or can’t think of it, my brain puts the English word in the sentence marked by Japanese grammar. Once you really ‘get’ how the sentences work you never really think in English anymore as it takes longer. All that said, there are some English language tendencies that do plague my Japanese. I guess at the end of the day it’s gonna be different for everyone. But I stand by my original statement, you can do away with it by N3 if you try
i think you also start encountering stuff that doesn’t have a direct translation or the direct translation is kinda awkward and that can spur not needing to directly translate. Like 私の恋はちょっと重すぎる… like, the feeling of that I understand, but it’s a slightly awkward phrase in english no matter how you put it, so it’s actually simpler (unless I was translating for other people) just to terminate the thought at my understanding while I still understand the vibes in JPN.
@Kasheall I definitely find myself reading unknown kanji words in English. ESP when I’m not sure of the reading but I know the meaning from context
@Jintor I find it crazy just how different Japanese is to English grammatically. In other languages I’ve dabbled in, if I knew every word in a sentence I could probably figure out the meaning, even if there was a bit of grammar/ nuance I missed. So, so far that’s my biggest learning curve, I’m still trying to shake the want of a 1:1 translation.
This is a really interesting question, though I’m not entirely sure at what point I started translating less in my head. I think it’s quite a gradual process, in my case at least. It’s hard to say exactly what JLPT level I’m at since I’ve never taking any tests, but I’d say solid N3 level - it’s been a year and a half since I began studying. Time flies.
But now I’m rambling I definitely still translate between languages to some extent when it comes to output, but input-wise - listening and especially reading - I only translate the occasional word into English. Especially if my brain is tired or not braining properly.
People have said above that N3 is around the point it starts to happen less, and I think that’s a pretty good estimate, though of course everyone will be different.
I’ve passed an N4 bunpro practice test which was crazy to me!
Congratulations You should be proud of yourself ^^
It sounds like we have a super similar pace in Japanese learning!
Your pace (at least what I gather from your posts) seems pretty similar to mine- so its nice to see where ill be if I keep it up (btw, I also love ado. Her and creepy nuts are the only people I listen to atm hahaha! Its so much fun to gradually catch different bits of lyrics)
I loved how you introduced it initially hahaha! Thanks for the recommendations!! Gira Gira is sick and I’ve not yet heard Elf, Ill save it so I can listen at work tomorrow~ Please, give me some more recs, but Ill be going to bed now so Ill reply to anything else tomorrow. Nite!
(My topic died already so it switching to an Ado fan club isn’t an issue )
Ofc hehe~ some really good songs imo (though they’re all good ) are Motherland, Yoru no Pierrot, Mirror, All Night Radio, Eien no Akuruhi and her newest song Magic if you haven’t heard that yet oh and also Ibara, Aitakute and Episode X.. is it obvious I’m fangirling right now lol
I’ve not yet heard Elf
Yayy you’re in for a treat, I adore that song so much
My topic died already so it switching to an Ado fan club isn’t an issue
It hasn’t died - rather been reincarnated into something even better That sounds like the title of an isekai novel.. My Topic Died and Was Reborn as an Ado Fan Club Thread lol
I should probably get some sleep now as well so.. nite
My study style is a lot of repetition of sentences with SRS, no formal grammar learning. I’ve stopped setting the examples sentences translation in English to reduce exposure as much as possible. (Still checking sometimes through LLM but only during the text exploratory phase)
If everything in the sentence is well known (especially all kanji readings) the translation is less frequent. The eyes are learning to skim known patterns faster and the meaning is directly inferred.
Learning the verbs okurigana especially is incredibly potent (and/or to know how much readings a kanji have to limit the possibilities)
The amount of non-translated content is heavily dependent of how much I read in the previous days.
For now I had the brain switch occur when going upward of 30~40 hours in a week. First time during August vacations and second time the week before Christmas (it was quicker the second time).
Because English and Japanese are so different structurally, for me there came a point where it became easier to form a sentence in Japanese from the ground up without starting from English. Once you get a sense for Japanese communication, you find that the simplest or easiest way to get an idea across in Japanese is almost never the same way it would be explained in English, so starting from English only really gets in the way.
I don’t remember exactly when this started happening, but I guess it goes hand in hand with conversational fluency- not really a JLPT or textbook level, but when conversational speech becomes somewhat automatic.
It’s not like flipping a switch, more like a skill you just develop over time, and the better you get, the less you’ll feel the need to use English at any step in comprehension or sentence building.
Not yet, but I’m beginning to have those happy moments where I see something in a WK review and want to type in the Japanese first (my reviews are set to do English first, then Japanese). The times where I see something and know what it is without thinking about the kanji at all is definitely great, especially when it’s kanji I struggle with.
Ado is superhuman- did you see her on The First Take? Incredible. And Shoka was my most listened to song of 2025. Apparently this is the first song Ado wrote and produced completely by herself. The lyrics go so hard!
I want to bring attention to this here because this is how I have come to understand when I’m done translating things. I “stopped” when I encountered understanding in Japanese first. It just becomes faster. It actually now takes more time for me to try and translate either English to Japanese or Japanese to English because the “vibes” are quite different for both languages. I also think you’ll stop translating more if you have people who speak Japanglish (using as much Japanese as you can but supplementing unknowns with English) with you. This way, whatever phrases are quicker to say in Japanese than English (eg. しかたがない/しょうがない vs It can’t be helped) will become part of the “understanding without translation” vocabulary bank.
You just gotta keep studying and adding more words. Reading things in Japanese will help as well because you’ll encounter similar phrases over and over and over again, and it’ll just start clicking.
How do you cope when the style changes? I’m reading 少女終末旅行 at the moment and it’s a much more simple Japanese structure than I’m used to. Took me a bit to get the flow, but it being a manga helped a lot.
This is sorta what I was thinking when I made the post! Thanks for bringing up the link to conversational fluency. I wonder, maybe you better understand the “vibe” of a given input bc you know what you mean when you use those words/ phrases?
when my brain reads kanji like it would Kana I get SO excited!
There’s a gal who I have mutual friends with nearby who knows Japanese. I’ve been trying to get in contact, but not to a stalkerish degree… I guess she has my number now so hopefully something comes of it At least I still have my pen pal. Maybe I could get her WhatsApp eventually haha (she’s a friend of a friend’s friend so it wouldn’t be too creepy to pass my number on later this year - but japanglish won’t be happening there lol)
I definitely still translate between languages to some extent when it comes to output, but input-wise - listening and especially reading - I only translate the occasional word into English. Especially if my brain is tired or not braining properly.
You should be proud of yourself ^^
(btw, I also love ado. Her and creepy nuts are the only people I listen to atm hahaha! Its so much fun to gradually catch different bits of lyrics)
Do you have any favourite songs of hers?
)
) are Motherland, Yoru no Pierrot, Mirror, All Night Radio, Eien no Akuruhi and her newest song Magic if you haven’t heard that yet