How do I think in Japanese and stop translating english into Japanese?

23 comments

1. you cant because youre too new to this. just stop worrying about it and engage with more japanese content. give it time. you cant cook an egg in a volcano.

2. word definitions, grammar, etc, write the meanings of those in japanese. If your knowledge of japanese is built on japanese, then that is good

3. Think about the meaning in terms of function not literal meaning, and think in larger chunks not single words when things are set phrases.

   I try to visualise scenarios/images/interactions where I can, or borrow suitably dramatic scenes from things I’ve read or watched where possible.

   e.g. “this grammar pattern is to ask permission, like if I was at a museum and wanted to check if it was ok to take photos” and not getting too bogged down into why there’s a も in there or trying to make a word by word translation fit.

4. I personally found that being forced to translate Japanese to a language I knew better, as in English, by making fan-translations improved my understanding of Japanese.

   It forced me to actually think about the nuance and meaning of many things and thus improved my understanding.

   > I realized that what they are saying makes complete sense in Japanese, but translated DIRECTLY into English is a little iffy. So I feel like thinking in Japanese is probably the solution to my problem

   The solution is not being literal in translating and finding a translation that isn’t iffy, which makes one realize better what the nuance and meaning of the Japanese is.

5. The thing that helps me is immerse myself in Japanese video content such as anime, movie, dramas, youtube vids, streams. There will be situations that I am able to visually and audially grasp and make sense of, and then I will hear what a Japanese person would say to that. In my head, I associate the scenario/context/situation with that particular sentence/phrase that the person said, and thus I’m putting thoughts to words, instead of putting words to words (i.e. translating).

   I can only hope this makes sense.

6. You’ll get there eventually as long as you keep working in it. What really helps though is conversation. Translating in your head takes time. When you’re talking to someone you don’t have that kind of time. You hear what they said and then immediately respond. It really forces your brain to just react instead of trying to translate

7. Listen to plenty of unscripted, natural, conversational Japanese.

   Practice (but not too hard) with replacing your thoughts. How would — いえ、日本人ならどう言うんだっけ、それについて？

   Ideally you want to remember what is said in a similar situation. If you don’t have that specific experience, then it’s normal for your thoughts / speech to be kinda weird. Oh well.

   Importantly, relax and be gentle with yourself. Activating a language takes time and can’t be rushed. It’s okay for your thoughts to be a bit of a messy mix. And the range of things you can express will be smaller, of course, so there’s a lot of self-acceptance necessary.

8. You will eventually start to formulate things in your mind in Japanese if you keep exposing yourself to it, especially listening to it, because the patterns and phrases you hear will become ensconced in your head such that they will eventually form the basis of thought formation. It can take a while, though. It isn’t really something you can “force”, in my experience with this in both this language and other ones beyond my native one. Best thing you can do is expose yourself to a lot of Japanese, as used by Japanese themselves when they are speaking, because what you are hearing is training your mind to recognize and understand, first, and then later to formulate its own thoughts in, Japanese word and phrase patterns.

9. Easy. Read fast…dont give your brain time to think about translating….but ensure input is still comprehensive

10. How long have you been studying Japanese? How many hours do you put into studying?

    The more you study and recall words from things like textbooks and what not, the easier it gets to remember and the less “translation” you have to do in your head.

    These drill get words from your short term memory and start getting you to pull them from your long term memory. If you can recall something effortlessly in conversation, you’re “there.”

    Seriously, one of the best ways I’ve personally found to do Japanese is to practice speaking with someone because in the moment you need to think and react. It’s a bit brutal at first but it gets easier.

11. practice more and try saying stuff to yourself. it helps to be in a japanese speaking environment. but now that i’m back in an english speaking environment i still sometimes go “kuso” instead of “shit” and i occasionally want to say something that popped into my mind fully formed in japanese and i don’t have anyone to say it to at the moment.

12. Practice

13. Eventually it just sort of happens.

    Here’s the [NINJAL corpus](https://nlb.ninjal.ac.jp/search/)—it’s kind of cool, if you haven’t played around with it before. Type in any word (or click on the initially displayed common words) and it will show you the most common words/particles/etc that come after that word.

    After awhile your brain sort of does that, too, in a rudimentary fashion. You know what words tend to follow which grammar points, which conjugations call for which particles, etc, and as a result of that the words just have a sort of natural gravity—your sentence flows out before you without too much effort.

    I think speaking becomes easier at that point, too, because you end up more focused on “what feels more natural in Japanese” than “how do I translate [nuance] from English.”

    >I realized that what they are saying makes complete sense in Japanese, but translated DIRECTLY into English is a little iffy.

    To be honest, I passed the N1 and I struggle to watch Japanese shows with English subtitles on. I would rather watch with none. The sentence structure of JP and EN is so different that if I try to pay attention to both I end up getting neither, lol.

    I find it easier to:

    * Watch with JP subtitles or none
    * Swap EN subtitles on if there is a specific line I’m struggling with

14. At this point in my journey with the language, I aim more for function rather than the full English thoughts. Some Japanese sentences translate into several broken English ideas, all roughly meaning the same thing. Some words don’t translate into English AT ALL.

    Thinking about it in English though, forces you to consider the many ways it’s presented (scrambling around in your head to see if the sentence sounds right in English FIRST), removing you from the ‘function’ of a basic idea. Hope that made sense.

15. What helped me a lot when I was in Japan living with a host family was to speak to my host mother as much as possible. She never went easy when talking to me and always spoke really fast.

    So that’s to say, I recommended taking a Japanese piece of content that is easy for you to understand and listen to it a few times, then move to harder and harder stuff, eventually it’ll be like night and day!

16. I don’t think there’s anything you can do to consciously force it. It will gradually start to happen as you progress in your studies. I don’t think I even realized it happened for me until one day, I was rewatching a video with Japanese audio that I’d seen first a long time ago and realized that I understood it without even thinking about it.

17. Immersion.

    When you read everything in japanese, say them in your mind in japanese.

    In your mind, instead of thinking the english word, think about the images.

18. I had this problem while learning Japanese and so I consciously changed my learning strategies for Korean and it worked.

    What you should do when studying is to not make notes in English at all. Learn the vocabulary and grammar by understanding the action in Japanese. You could translate into English temporarily to understand the action/description but don’t try to codify and learn in English.

    Also, immerse yourself in more Japanese media like dramas and stuff so you can see and hear things in action and that helps you absorb the words better as well.

19. For me it kind of happened during my anime-obsessed undergraduate years. A lot of anime has first-person narration and I started to talk in my head as if I am in an anime and boom, thinking in Japanese. Although I did it for simple things and expressions since my Japanese was limited.

    I also think that having English as your second language also made me familiar with language switching in my head.

20. I can’t give you an advice on Japanese specifically because I’m at a very beginner level but I can tell you about English, which is my second language, that there’s nothing you can do besides getting tons of input. I went from having a tough time following an episode of Seinfeld to literally having to translate something from English to Portuguese that I wanted to talk with my family.
    Just trust the process and eventually you will think in whatever language is more natural in your mind for the given topic.

21. If you practice speaking and writing in Japanese, you’ll get better at this. The goal when practicing is to form your sentences in Japanese, rather than deciding what you want to say in English and translating it.

22. You’re seeing the translation issues because they’re *not* perfect translations. Translators may try their best to represent the spirit of what is said, or be more literal or verbose, but in the end: Japanese translated into English is no longer what was said in Japanese. The only perfectly correct reading of the Japanese text is in Japanese itself. The English translations are only crutches to help you try and understand it. The English is “right” only in as much as it helps you to better understand what is trying to be said in Japanese.

    Our brains think of the world as a place of actions. When you’re doing something, try asking yourself questions about it in Japanese, and then try answering yourself. It can be super simple. But impromptu engagements of your brain in a spoken, conversational form will help to establish the Japanese language independently in your mind. “kore wa nani?” and “doko ni…” are prompts you might use at any time. feeding a pet? “tabesasemasu”. Describing your own actions lets you practice verb conjugations.

    You’ll find quickly that you don’t know the words for stuff. Don’t get hung up on it for a second, just drop the English word in the middle of it, but still be speaking in Japanese / with Japanese grammar. Look it up later. Or don’t, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the attempt that mattered, that engaged your brain, and is carving out a spot for the Japanese language to grow.

23. This takes time, but I think it’s something that can be actively worked on. What most language learners do is connect Japanese words to English words, so if they hear the word “neko”, they translate it to “cat” and then think of the mental image of a cat. What you actually want to do is go directly from the Japanese word to the mental image of what it is. Some ways to encourage your brain to do this include labeling objects around the house, using flashcards with pictures instead of translations, acting out new verbs to connect them to a physical cue, attempting to visualize sentences instead of translating them, and deliberately using Japanese in your internal monologue when you can- so if you get on the bus, think to yourself “basu ni notte imasu” etc, etc. At first it will be very difficult to think in Japanese for more than few words, but the important thing is to try and do it here and there, a few times a day if possible. Don’t push it too hard, it’s a skill that will come gradually over an extended period of time.