Hey there! This is TOP episode 235. Translating In Your Head
Are you tired of lacking confidence when speaking English? Does it block you from achieving your true goals? This podcast is the place for you. This is Teacher Ola Podcast. My name’s Ola Mierniczak, I’m a teacher empowering English learners to become confident speakers. The key to fluency is in your pocket. Join my TOPeople newsletter for weekly motivation and free materials. Enjoy your journey to fluency!
Hey there! Thank you for stopping by. Today I’m going to anwer the question that pops up all the time. How? How to stop translating from my mother tongue to English in my head? Very important question. I’ll break it down for you today and I hope you change your mind about head translations after listening to this episode. This is a fragment of one of the foundations lessons in my English course SIOL (Say It Out Loud). You can learn more about it at siol.pl.
Before we start let me warmly invite you to my free 3-day training during which you’ll learn 3 secrets of fluent pronunciation. There will be 3 days of training, 21, 22, 23 March. Sign up at: teacherola.com/webinar.
Language storage in the brain is very complex. It takes years to create all the connections, all the associations, to strengthen the links between grammar structures and vocabulary and after some time it all just clicks. Be patient if it hasn’t clicked just yet. You have to go on. Consistency plus patience is your answer.
It might seem that you have your main language, in our case Polish in one part of the brain and English or any foreign language in another part of the brain. And we might be tempted to think that it’s possible to simply switch off one language and switch on the other one. Just stop thinking in Polish! Start thinking in English! Well, that’s absolutely impossible. Language storage, as I said at the beginning, the language storage is complex.
It’s not clearly organised into some neat shelves or compartments. I’m sorry to break it to you but it’s rather messy. Very very messy. Like when you watch the criminal film and the character is trying to solve a mystery of a murder and he or she has that investigation board covered with photos, pictures, notes, words, pieces of information, lines connecting some facts, some events. It looks so messy and nonsense, but you know what? In the end when you move backwards when you zoom out, when you look at the wall as a whole you start to see a pattern. It turns out all these pieces of information actually come together and make a lot of sense.
It’s a language salad, your brain is trying to grasp it all at once. The more pieces of information it has the more connections it can make. Like, red in English means czerwony in Polish, to see red means to be angry, and that makes sense because you associate red colour with strong emotions, with blood with rage but also with love. And you have millions of such connections, associations. That’s also why adults learn faster than children – we simply have more such connections. We have more experience and more data in our brains, so now making the connections is easier for the brain.
Of course it causes problems. For instance, You have your idea of how to ask someone for their age in Polish: ‘Ile masz lat?’. And then you want to ask that in English, and you go somewhere along these lines:
How many years do you have?
And then you learn it’s wrong, because the proper structure in English is:
How old are you?
And your brain goes: Wow! What a question? How old are you?! Seriously? It’s so much fun for the brain!
But if you know the structure, you know the pattern, you hear people using it, you see it in the text you read, you start to use it and then you stop thinking about it. It becomes a natural expression. And that’s how you do it. With patience. One expression after another. You can speed up the process by learning grammar and vocabulary instead of just exposing yourself to it and waiting for your brain to notice the relations the contrasts between your language and a foreign language. But the more data you put in the more clicks happen.
Also, notice how it expands your horizons. Now you have more than just one perspective on a given topic. This is how we express that in Polish but your brain kind of grows when you show it another way of looking at things. At past, present, future. Present perfect? What’s that? The brain is excited, wow, we do not have that in our language storage! And those sounds ‘th’, ‘cz’, ‘r’? Amazing!
But now, how to use one language while speaking. How to choose the right structures? Well, in an attempt to ‘mute’ your Polish we’ve got to turn the volume of Polish down. Is it possible to completely mute out your Polish? No. Even if you’re bilingual, even if you’re fluent in English, Polish language in your brain can never be muted and that makes me emotional for reasons I don’t know.
Very important thing is this, your ability to turn down the volume of Polish in your head and making it quieter comes with time, with patience.
So now, why do we translate from our mother tongue?
It’s not that you do those mental translations all the time. Like now, I’m not translating from Polish to English but if I don’t know the structure I need I will start thinking in Polish.
Once again. If you come across an unfamiliar grammatical structure or if you hear words you don’t know what you can do? You will immediately begin translating word for word into or from your mother tongue. You will turn to available data. You hear the word ‘nonplussed’. It’s a new word and your brain automatically starts searching through available data. And what does it find? Well, plus – benefit – not minus – opposite of minus – adding – math – numbers – calculations – plussed – verb – non – prefix – dodać – dodany – nonplussed – niedodany. And here you are confused, because the sentence goes:
He was nonplussed by her question.
And it makes zero sense to you.
But see? Our brains are busy trying to find connections and make out the meaning.
But being busy like this results in us standing there not listening anymore but thinking. And that brain work causes us to be frozen. You say you get stuck and you give up listening, you give up speaking because you came across an unfamiliar word.
So we translate in our heads when we don’t know the grammar, words, contexts (so it’s when you know the word or you know the grammatical structure but you haven’t seen it in such a context before, and that is new data again). You also think in Polish when you want to check if you understand the thing you hear or read correctly. Just to make sure you grasp the idea, and you compare it with your data in Polish to make it clear. And that makes you feel confident. If you can find the corresponding idea in Polish. If you can, you feel much better. For example:
To cry over the spilt milk – a yeah, easy, very easy we have exactly the same words for the same idea!
To beat around the bush means owijać w bawełnę. Ok, different words, but the meaning of the idea, we know this idea we have it in Polish! Easy!
To be a wet blanket – and here we have no corresponding idiom in Polish. We just don’t. And that’s why it’ll be hard for us to use it. Because even if you know the meaning, the lack of a corresponding phrase results in lack of confidence. If you don’t feel confident you avoid the phrase.
That leads me to my point. There’s nothing wrong with translating in your head. You shouldn’t try to stop that process. It gives you confidence. That’s not the problem. Bilingual people translate, fluent people translate you will also translate. The question is different!
How to turn down the volume of your mother tongue? How to translate quickly? How to be fluent? Well, the answer is practice and patience. No magic solutions, but only this magical solution, consistency, patience and practice will take you there.
One thing you have to avoid always is translating word for word. Look at this:
How old are you?
Jak stary/a jesteś ty?
No. Translate! But the whole phrase. That’s why in our vocabulary section we learn new words in sentences, in context, that’s why the translations I provide in Audiotraining can be confusing for you. It’s because we want to learn translating ideas, meaning not words. Always try to turn down the volume of Polish.
How old are you?
I’m 35.
He’s 40.
She’s 2.
When he was 5, he would eat with his hands.
The meaning, age.
So how to turn down the volume of Polish quickly? That’s the thing. You can’t do it just like that. First you need a lot of data. Data you can use in speaking, you have to be fluent. When you’re fluent you can ‘think in English’. That takes consistency, practice and patience. Don’t be so hard on yourself, give yourself some grace and say it out loud!
Let’s practice. Listen and repeat these sentences:
Language storage in the brain is very complex.
It turns out all these pieces of information actually come together and make a lot of sense.
Consistency plus patience is your answer.
How to choose the right structures?
He was nonplussed by her question.
To cry over the spilt milk.
To beat around the bush.
If you don’t feel confident you avoid the phrase.
Don’t be so hard on yourself.
The question is different!
Well done! Now, don’t forget to complete the Worksheet for this episode. It’s available at teacherola.com/235.
I’m sure you’ve learned something new, something useful. I hope you can now understand better what is really happening in your head when you translate from your mother tongue to a foreign language.
If you like my work please leave a comment on iTunes, rate this podcast on Spotify and like it on YouTube!
Go to teacherola.com/webinar and sign up for a free training! It’s on the 21 March! I do such trainings only once in a few weeks so go and grab your spot. Teacherola.com/webinar.
I’ll be back soon, and you stay fearless, say it out loud and take care! I’m your teacher, Teacher Ola, and you were listening to Teacher Ola Podcast. Bye for now!