What can I do to stop translating in my head?

When getting input, if you feel that you are translating involuntarily in your head, or that you need to translate some words to be able to understand them, it probably means that you have consciously learned those words as translations, and you haven’t acquired them yet. We should first make clear that translating in your head is not a necessary step of learning a language, and if you learn a language using comprehensible input from the beginning it can be minimized or completely eliminated. Still, you may find yourself involuntarily doing it. To reduce and eventually get rid of the habit of translating in your head, the only thing you need to do is to keep acquiring vocabulary. To make that easier, we recommend watching content at a lower level than you think you need. That way, more of the words you encounter will be words that you have already acquired and that you don’t need to translate in order to understand. This will give your brain a chance to acquire the words that you have consciously learned but haven't acquired yet. Watching content at a lower level may seem boring, but it will be less taxing and you’ll be able to get more input time every day without your head feeling exhausted and getting distracted.