Still very much in the "mentally translate every sentence before I say it" phase and it is exhausting. For those who've gotten past this — was there a clear turning point, or did it just fade gradually without you noticing?
No single turning point for me, it really did fade gradually — I only noticed in hindsight when I realised I hadn’t rehearsed a sentence in weeks.
Mine was sudden, oddly: ordered food without mentally rehearsing it first and only realised afterwards what I’d done. Felt like a genuine milestone.
still waiting for this day tbh
For me the real marker was dreaming in it. Once that started happening the daytime translating eased off noticeably within a month or two.
Gradual for me, but dropping subtitles and switching the radio over sped it up a lot. Forcing immersion helped more than any app did.
Honestly it never fully went away for me on complex topics — tax forms, medical stuff, anything technical still gets a mental detour. Casual chat stopped needing it a long time ago though.
Does it ever come back for anyone when you’re tired or stressed, even long after it mostly stopped? Mine reappears out of nowhere on bad days.
Mine flipped during an argument, of all things — too heated to translate, the words just came out directly. Never expected an argument to be the milestone.
Listening went first for me by a long way, speaking lagged behind for another six months or so after that.
still very much translating everything, this thread is aspirational reading at this point