Do people who speak multiple languages just translate the words back to their native tongue to understand it?

Answer 1

I am bi-lingual English/ German, and I have acquired a decent level of Italian and French throughout my life. Moreover, I've learned some Spanish and Portuguese and have picked up a few words and expressions here and there in other languages. Therefore, I can tell the difference. As far as my native languages English and German are concerned, I sometimes think in one and sometimes in the other language. When I read or listen to the news, the information is processed without attaching a language tag to it. This is why I sometimes don't remember in which of the two languages I've actually heard or read a certain piece of information. When I speak English, I think in English, and when I speak German, I think in German. There is absolutely no translating going on in my mind. However, when I speak Italian or French, using the language is only partly automatic, and I'm still doing quite a bit of translating in my mind using both English and German to translate back and forth. Spanish and Portuguese are my weakest languages. Hence, I constantly rely on translating and only have total autonomy when producing sentences that I have rehearsed and that I can use without giving too much thought to it.

Answer 2

I speak multiple languages, and I actually think in the language that I am speaking. When you are first acquiring new chunks of language (phrases, words, verb conjugations, responses, etc.), most people go thru a process of translation into their native language, however with time, practice and motivation, you eventually acquire those new chunks of language as normally and naturally as you did when learning your native language.