Unwanted translating

Index » The Japanese language

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Reply #1 - 2010 March 14, 8:27 pm
ta12121 Member
From: Canada Registered: 2009-06-02 Posts: 3190

Do any of you guys have this as well? When you're reading Japanese things or watching subtitles or follow shows in Japanese. Do you sometimes have that automatic translation into English in your head? Is there ways of helping you think more in Japanese? Should i just go fully monolingual with my sentences or vocab i put into my srs?  (I'm at the stage where i can understand a lot of things in full Japanese without looking up terms, but as always there's some terms i have to look up to understand everything-to understand the sentence as a whole)
Anyway got suggestions to help?
How do you guys make yourselves think in japanese? (I do think in japanese but, still have those random translations in my head, hate it cause sometimes it's just automatic)
Want to be able to think in japanese for japanese. Or does this skill take the longest out of anything?

Reply #2 - 2010 March 14, 8:29 pm
Smackle Member
Registered: 2008-01-16 Posts: 463

Translating in your head is just a temporary state caused by inexperience. The more familiar you are with a word and its many meanings, the less likely you are to translate it in your mind.

Reply #3 - 2010 March 15, 5:33 am
wccrawford Member
From: FL US Registered: 2008-03-28 Posts: 1551

Yup, it happens to me all the time now.  And it happens quickly enough that I can follow full-speed speech with it, too.

I also have times when I'm watching a show without subtitles and I just kind of zone out and understand what's going on, but without the translation.  Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to recall what was actually said for most of the zone-out time, so it's questionable how much I'm actually understanding from speech and how much from images.

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Reply #4 - 2010 March 15, 7:26 am
Rekkusu Member
From: Kyoto Registered: 2009-07-12 Posts: 172

I try to force myself to my best extend not to autotranslate, but to keep it all clean and Japanese. This is also why Khatz suggests going monolingual early, which is also what I do mostly.
Still I let one pass through once in a while though hmm

Reply #5 - 2010 March 15, 8:09 am
Codexus Member
From: Switzerland Registered: 2007-11-27 Posts: 721

Once I get started translating what I hear into French or English it's kind of hard to stop. It's like trying not to think about something, the more you try the more you actually think about that. So just relax and listen and the voice of translation goes away.

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