How do you say X in Spanish?

While memorizing how to say a specific word or sentence in a language is absolutely fine if you need it for a practical purpose, it doesn't work as a strategy for language learning. Thinking that the way we learn a language is by learning how to map our first language to our target language arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of what a language is. When speaking your native language, your brain uses its mental image of the language to convert thought into words. The same happens when you acquire a second language and speak it. You don’t first convert your thoughts into your first language and then into your second language. You need to build the connections that will allow you to directly convert thought into words and expressions in your target language. Trying to translate in your head will not only slow you down, it just doesn’t work. Trying to translate specific words will often end in unnatural language or in expressions that are not comprehensible to speakers of your target language. We explain it in more detail in our answer to Why does language X work like this? Why is this said this way? Can’t I just say it like in English?.