AUDAZ REVISTA
You cannot stop translating in your head
Fluent bilinguals never stop either. Their first language fires automatically, underneath awareness. What changes with practice is speed, and speed is trainable.
2007
Your brain translates anyway
Thierry and Wu showed English word pairs to fluent Chinese-English bilinguals. For half the pairs, the hidden Chinese translations shared a written character. Their brains reacted to the hidden Chinese while reading only English.
The N400, a brain response tied to meaning, gave the translation away. The authors called first-language activation unconscious and automatic.
0 OF 15
Nobody noticed it happening
Fifteen fluent bilinguals sat the reading experiment. At debriefing, none reported noticing the hidden Chinese character repeats. Their brains had responded to every one.
If fluent adults cannot suppress it, you cannot either. Just stop translating asks for something no human brain has been shown to do.
TWO JOBS, ONE WORD
Only one kind of translating slows you down
Automatic co-activation is free and invisible. Consciously composing your sentence in English and converting it word by word is the slow one, and only that one is trainable.
The fix is chunks you can reach for whole, so there is nothing left to assemble.
1994
Direction matters
Kroll and Stewart found Spanish to English runs on quick word-to-word links. English to Spanish routes through meaning first, and that slower route is the exact link thinking in Spanish depends on.
Blanket bans on translation throw away the useful half.
EXERCISES 1 + 2
Narrate, then translate on purpose
Say what you are doing while you do it. Estoy lavando los platos. Then take five English sentences from your own life, turn each into Spanish, and drill them until they arrive without the English.
Keep the thoughts small. Tengo hambre beats a beautifully hedged sentence about your appetite.
EXERCISE 3
Learn chunks, not single words
Single words have to be assembled into sentences, and assembly is where English sneaks in. Me da igual. Ahora mismo. Whole phrases arrive ready to use.
Filler words are the cheapest chunks of all. They buy you thinking time in real conversation.
EXERCISE 4
Read one author until it gets easy
Krashen's case for narrow reading: each writer has favourite expressions and a distinctive style, so staying with one author provides built-in review. The first few pages are the hard part.
His first instruction: lower your standards. Read the thing that is genuinely fun, because enjoyment produces volume.
EXERCISE 5
Put a clock on it
Take ten sentences you already know. Say all ten, timed. Do it again tomorrow and watch the number fall. Knowing a sentence and producing it in under two seconds are different skills.
Only the second one shows up in conversation.
NO DEADLINE
It tracks contact hours, not calendar months
No study gives a number, and anyone quoting one is guessing. Ordering coffee goes automatic long before arguing about politics does. Frequency of daily use is the strongest predictor.
Tap for the full guide, with the four-week plan and the research behind each exercise.