🔄 The Translator Block:

Why “Thinking in Japanese” Slows You Down

You hear a sentence.
You understand the words… but only after you’ve mentally translated them.
By the time you get the meaning, the next sentence has already started.

You think,
“Hold on… let me translate that.”
“I know these words, but what do they mean together?”
“I just need a second to process…”

This is the Translator Block.
And it’s one of the most invisible — and most costly — traps in TOEIC listening and reading.

What is the Translator Block?

The Translator Block is what happens when your brain tries to process English by converting it into Japanese first.

You’re not listening for meaning — you’re converting word by word.
You’re not reading for structure — you’re rearranging the sentence in your head.
And instead of understanding in real-time, you’re always one step behind.

This isn’t a language problem.
It’s a habit problem. A side effect of how you were taught.

Signs You Might Be Caught in This Block

• You feel like you can’t understand English unless you translate it

• You pause frequently during listening to “catch up” in your head

• You rearrange the sentence structure mentally before understanding it

• You miss the main point because you're focused on translating individual words

• You read slowly, line by line, translating as you go — not grasping the whole meaning

Why Does This Happen?

In school, English was something to be “converted.”
You were trained to find the Japanese equivalent.
Grammatical terms were explained in Japanese.
Reading meant translating line by line.
Listening meant guessing what you heard after you heard it.

But TOEIC doesn’t wait for your internal translator.
The clock moves forward. The next sentence begins.
And the translation habit that helped you survive English class is now holding you back.

This block often combines with:

• The Over Thinker Block: analysing sentence structure instead of processing naturally

• The Passive Listener Block: zoning out when translation slows you down

• The Speed Trap Block: getting stuck in long sentences

• The Memoriser Block: remembering words but not knowing how they flow in context

You’re not slow.
Your brain is just trying to use the wrong tool for the job.

ALT’s Solution: Stop Translating, Start Thinking in English

With Accelerated Learning Technology (ALT), we retrain your brain to process English as English — not as code to be translated.

✅ Meaning-First Training
We build the habit of grasping overall intent, not word-by-word meaning — so you stop needing to “decode” every sentence.

✅ Input Simplification
ALT lessons start with clear, clean input. You won’t get overwhelmed. Instead, your brain gets used to understanding directly — from context, tone, and structure.

✅ Sentence Pattern Rewiring
You’ll work with core TOEIC sentence patterns until they feel normal. This makes native structure predictable, not scary.

✅ Speed Training Without Panic
We build your fluency step by step — not by throwing you into fast speech, but by helping your brain process faster through rhythm, repetition, and real usage.

MTC Coaching: Breaking the Translation Habit

It’s hard to let go of what you were taught.
That’s why we don’t just give you exercises — we coach you through the shift.

🔍 Spot Your Translation Points
Your coach will show you where you start translating — in what types of questions, or at what point in a sentence.

🎯 Build Direct Understanding
We’ll train you to connect phrases and ideas directly to meaning — with zero Japanese in between.

📣 Practice Real-Time Processing
Through short, structured listening and reading drills, you’ll learn to react as you hear, not after.

🧠 Reframe the Goal
You’re not aiming to “understand everything perfectly.”
You’re learning to follow meaning in motion — and that’s exactly what TOEIC rewards.

Real Example:

N-san (30s, admin assistant) always translated sentences in her head, causing her to miss key info in Part 3 and 4. After three weeks of ALT’s sentence pattern drills and coaching, she said, “It’s weird… I just got it without thinking.”

Mini Q&A

Q: Is it bad to translate in my head?
A: Not bad — but slow. In TOEIC, every second counts. ALT trains you to process meaning directly, without detouring through Japanese.

Q: I feel safer translating. Should I stop completely?
A: You don’t need to quit cold turkey. But we’ll show you where translation slows you down — and how to build confidence without it.

Q: What if I don’t understand a word?
A: That’s okay. You don’t need every word — just the intended meaning. ALT teaches you to work with what you do understand.

Ready to Stop Thinking in Japanese?

If you’ve ever felt, “I understood the sentence — but only after I translated it,”
That’s the Translator Block.

Take our free Learning Block Diagnostic to see how this habit may be holding you back — and start training your brain to understand directly.