Translating in your head is the main thing standing between intermediate English and fluent English. It's slow, it produces sentences that are correct but subtly wrong, and it breaks down completely under time pressure — which is exactly when you need the language most.
What translating costs you
Three things happen when you compose in your first language and convert.
It's slow. Two operations instead of one, which is why the window to speak in a fast conversation closes before you're ready.
It produces first-language structure in English words. Grammatically fine, recognisably not how anyone says it — the sentences that make people say your English is very good in a particular tone.
And it fails when it matters. Under pressure the extra step is the first thing to collapse, so you go silent precisely when you most need to speak.
Why people keep doing it
Because it works at the beginning. Early on, translation is the only route available, and it gets you through your first year.
Then it becomes a habit, and habits don't end because they've stopped being useful.
What thinking in English actually is
Not an advanced state you arrive at. It's a set of chunks you have direct access to — phrases that come out whole, without construction.
You already have some. How are you · I don't know · see you later arrive without translation. Fluency is that set getting large enough to cover most of what you say.
So this isn't a mental trick to adopt. It's a gradual replacement of construction with retrieval.
How to build it
Learn phrases, not words. A phrase is already a chunk. A single word has to be assembled into something, and assembly is where translation enters.
Narrate small things, silently. Walking somewhere, cooking, waiting — describe what you're doing in English in your head. Low stakes, no listener, and it practises generating rather than converting.
Stop looking up the word mid-sentence. When you're missing a word, go around it. The thing you use to open bottles keeps you in English; stopping to translate hands the sentence back to your first language.
Accept a simpler sentence. The urge to express the full complexity of your thought is what forces translation. Say the simpler version, in English, immediately. Precision comes later; fluency comes from not stopping.
Speak often enough that there's no time. The real mechanism. Translation requires a gap, and conversation at normal speed doesn't provide one. Practising under mild time pressure is what makes direct retrieval the only option available.
What it feels like when it starts
Not a sudden change. People usually notice it the other way round — realising afterwards that they had a whole conversation without composing anything, or finding they can't remember which language something was said in.
It also comes and goes. Tired, stressed or caught off guard, most bilingual people drop back to translating. That's normal and not a loss of progress.
The thing that doesn't help
Deciding to think in English. It isn't a decision; it's what happens once you have enough ready-made language and enough practice retrieving it under pressure.