do all the non-native speakers of english here automatically

I translate from English to Italian quite often even if my mother tongue is romanian. Sometimes I understand English but I'm not able to use proper words in Italian and this may be because I read in English but I do not practice it.

>>73760119
You're probably just shit at speaking whatever your second language is. I instantly comprehend written and spoken English without translating it to German first. Maybe it's because I'm more of an intuitive speaker and don't actively think about grammar or orthography.

I dont, i can think in english, but i dont remember if today i was thinking in slovak on english

>>73760119
english is my first language for writing
i still read numbers in spanish though, without being aware. the 100s...

>>73760119
no.

sometimes when i write in english i might have a moment of complete blackout, forgetting what a certain word is in english, then i have to go to look for a translation. it might be an easy one like a chair or table or some adjective

your brain doesn't automatically translate the words you just know what they mean and don't think about it further

>>73763818
this if anything theres a sublanguage of nebulous ideas that any language you know translates from

>>73760119
No, I don't translate anything. I don't think about it at all.
Translating a language also makes it infinitely harder.

I think a better way to see it as if you are extending your vocabulary to such a degree that it eventually covers an entire language.

>>73760119
After a while (when one acquires enough vocabulary) you start to think in the foreign language you're learning. That's usually the moment you start to become fluent in it

>>73764810
When you speak a language you also use a lot of figurative speech. And figurative speech can be a real pain to translate. So you shouldn't even bother.

Translating sentences can be useful when you are learning a language. But when you use a language you should absolutely refrain from translating anything.

>>73763556
Exactly this

language translation is a whole nother beast

it's always really difficult and a lot is lost in translation

it's easier to just switch to english mode completely

>>73760119
At least speaking (IRL) in English would extremely slow if it was first translated from the native language so basically you just have to actually know the languages "separately". I'm tired but I hope this makes even some sense,

>>73760119
i dream in Finnish and start to think in Finnish if I'm agitated but otherwise my mind usually defaults to English.
I also translate every word of Finnish I read or hear into English and vice versa even though I don't need to, I just can't stop doing it. It began in high school and was so annoying at first that I went to study English at uni to get used to it. Now I can barely form coherent thoughts in Finnish and yet can't speak English worth shit because I never have to actually speak it with anyone.
it fucking sucks i'm telling you

>>73760119
no. its like predictive text. memorizing and reading "patterns" are everything. you dont really read/translate each word but always expect/construct a pattern.