Think in another language without translating Chris

Parker

Chris Parker started to study Mandarin in 2006. He has worked as a

translator and simultaneous interpreter between Chinese and English,
and has taught interpretation in the UK and in Beijing. Through his
Youtube channel, (www.youtube.com/user/gaoyoude1) his website
(www.fluentinmandarin.com) and his Facebook page
(https://www.facebook.com/fluentinmandarin) he is making it his
mission to demystify Chinese and make it easier to learn.
It is possible to think in a foreign language without translating?
Learning and speaking Chinese for more than 8 years has given me
plenty of time to think about the process of how I and other people
learn foreign languages. One of the things I have become aware of is to
what extent learning naturally by immersing yourself in a language
works. Is it possible to speak a foreign language naturally rather
than having to consciously translate from your native language?
This article is my answer to this question.
My own language study background
I have had a mixed background with languages. When I was at school I
took every opportunity I could to study French, Spanish and Russian,
but it wasnt until I decided to study Chinese at university that I really
studied a language intensively for a long period of time. I have also
spent a couple of years in China, and my work has also included
translation and training as a simultaneous interpreter from Chinese to
English. I have gone through long language learning processes myself.
Understanding how you learn to speak a language
When you start learning a foreign language, everything appears
completely new to you, except the words that you might recognise from
your own language or other languages you have learned. Your brain
has to get used to a completely new set of sounds, a new vocabulary,
and new ways of putting sentences together. You have to try hard to

pick out words from the stream of information that you dont
understand.
The process of learning to speak a foreign language is similar. At the
beginning, you might learn some simple phrases which you will have to
pull out of your brain when you want to talk, or you might have
practised certain types of sentences or grammar patterns, which you
have to think about and form slowly. In comparison with your native
tongue, the foreign language seems very unnatural, and it is not the
thing you think of first. Students will often ask, How do you say .
in X language? which shows how much they are falling back on their
native language, to make things make sense or as a place to start
from.
In fact, there is nothing wrong with this. I believe is that it is fine to
include English, or your native language in language courses, or to use
it as a reference. Thats what I did when I designed my own beginners
Chinese course Survive in Chinese. Of course, the courses which
claim to teach you the way a child learns using just pictures and no
translations also work, but I have always found it quicker at the
beginning to learn through contrast with my native language, and
sometimes from translations. After all, as adults, we have already
learned a language once before, and I believe it is completely possible
to use this to our advantage.

Sometimes, translating can cut short the path to speaking

When I was learning Chinese, I didnt just take English as a reference,
I bought a handful of books designed for Chinese people to study
English, which had English texts translated in full into Chinese. This
way, I had the two languages side by side, and I built on my basic
ability to express the ideas I could express in English in Chinese. Much
later, when I trained as an interpreter, translating became a skill
that I had to master, as accurately as possible, and part of my job. But
there was a potential problem: was I really learning to speak
Chinese? or was I just getting better at translating English in my
head?
The process from translating in your head to speaking more
naturally is one that most language learners have to go through. Even
if you are not consciously thinking from your native language, you are

still affected by the interference it causes when you are speaking a

foreign language.
Let me give you a few examples of this at the beginner level. An
English speaker learning Chinese who wants to ask Can I have a class
of water? might come up with , which is an
attempt to translate the English sentence extremely literally, and is
wrong in Chinese. A correct way to put it might be
? Likewise, if an English speaker wanted to say Do you have my
watch? in Chinese, he might think it was ? which
is an attempt to force English into Chinese. A natural way to ask the
question could be ? Another funny example is
that for almost two years I thought the phrase for blow your nose in
Chinese was which is a literal translation that makes no
sense in Chinese. Later I found out it should be . Either
people had been too reluctant to correct me all that time or I had just
completely confused them!
It is not just words that English speakers sometimes try to force into
Chinese, but also grammatical concepts. Because English has rigid
tenses, learners can sometimes try to make Chinese grammar work
more like English grammar, for example by adding every time
they think something has happened in the past or or something
similar when they think something is happening in the future, which
can create very unnatural or grammar textbook sounding Chinese.
Part of the learning process is breaking away from very rigid
textbook structures when you are speaking and trying to get a feel
for the language as it is really used.
So, given these kind of differences, how did I breach the gap to
speaking natural Chinese?
Getting more input and learning to spot your own mistakes
Even though trying to speak a lot of Chinese and doing a lot of
translation gave me a great way to get started and I think it also cut
down the time it took me to get fluent, there was still something that
was missing: a lot of input and exposure to the language. Worse still,
even if I was speaking unnatural Chinese, I didnt necessarily know
it at first. Thats why I started to expose myself to a lot of Chinese
watching TV series, listening to the radio, watching the news, reading
novels, and just paying attention to other people when they spoke in
conversations. Also, when I was learning interpreting, I also listened to

hours of speeches in Chinese on loads of different topics, which taught

me a formal style of how to speak and a lot of vocabulary.
Slowly, when I was speaking myself, I started to realise that there were
things that I had been hearing that had been saying wrong. I started to
realise what sounded weird and how I might be able to express
things more authentically. I also heard some things that I had been
pronouncing wrong, and some tones which I had not been getting
right. In short: I got a much better feel for the language and learnt
to correct myself.
The journey from translating to speaking naturally
Without actually starting to translate the language first when I was
speaking, I would never have produced these errors, and without
listening to the language for hours over a very long period of time, I
would never have realised what it was supposed to be like and been
able to correct the errors. This process will carry on for me, as I
continue to learn new things. I still remind myself that I have been
speaking English for more than 20 years, and I have only spoken
Chinese for eight or so. Of course my English is going to be stronger
and more dominant.
So, to go back to my original question, I think it is completely possible
to learn a language naturally, without translation, but that might not
be the quickest way in. To me, it is a process that you will benefit from
much more later, but dont let that worry you; the process of
naturalising yourself is an amazing journey. It might even open up
your mind or change your life. It will take time, but why would you
want to cut that journey short?