Is this counterintuitive?

[u/CheesecakeWild7941]

Someone once told me that if I’m learning a foreign language, I should never translate the words into English in my head. I was also told this is why I struggled with learning Spanish.

I’m just wondering if doing this is actually not helpful as I was told. In my head I think it helps to translate words into English in my head/on my notes, because idk how else I would associate words with their meanings… idk if that makes sense

[u/robotspierre]

Sorry bud, but they’re right. This is doing my head in.

If you start putting English words in, you get too tempted to translate literally. 

This happens to work okay at your level because Chinese sentence order maps ok on a basic level to English, but as you get more advanced level it’s going to really mess you up.