“When will I stop translating in my head?”

At the beginner stage of learning a second language, often you find yourself much slower than everyone else. This is because you hear what someone says in Japanese, try and remember it, then go through each word individually, parse the grammar and then maybe end up with an understanding of what was asked to you.

In the meantime, you’ve been standing there for 10 seconds or so in total silence.

So how can you stop doing this? The key is understanding that eventually you have to think in Japanese. You can’t spend time translating to English, then back to Japanese. It’s why when people go to live in Japan with the goal of improving their Japanese it can be so eye-opening.

Personally, it was not enough to go to Japan, I had to be firm with everyone around me and ask them not to communicate in English anymore. I also limited my time on the computer (because I would just chat in English and send emails) and I also stopped watching any English media on TV. This does result in feelings of loneliness, helplessness and isolation. It can be very jarring to suddenly not be able to understand anyone or anything, even the most basic of questions. Luckily I was with a host family who were very kind.

So how did I start to improve? It started with some basic phrases I would use around the house and school. One of the most useful ones was,

お風呂に入ってもいい？

Once this type of sentence gets in your head (which will happen if you repeat it every night) you start to notice you can swap some things out and use that same grammar. You start to notice that お風呂に入る means to take a bath, and the てもいい is a type of permission. Combined with textbook study, you see other permutations of this ‘permission’ sentence.

ドーナツ食べてもいい？公園に行ってもいい？And so on. At this point, you start to realise that one of the main things holding you back is how quickly you can make that てform. Luckily, your textbook has a list of all the てforms, so you start to just rote learn them.

Let me put it to you this way: rather than insisting on translation, it’s better to find out how Japanese people would express their thoughts and copy that.