How long did it take you to stop mentally translating?

I try to be kind to myself and just accept when I catch myself mentally translating, then quickly refocus on what I’m watching. I’m just about to hit 150 hours in the next week, which feels exciting!

That said, stopping the habit of mentally translating has been tough. I’m probably watching at 1.05 to 1.1 speed most of the time to limit the habit. Sometimes, I catch myself translating an entire sentence, or I’ll paraphrase everything back to my husband to tell him the story of what’s happening (especially if it’s funny!) I hope that’s not too detrimental to my acquisition. I really enjoy sharing and talking about the videos, so I try not to stress about it too much.

I also have a dedicated chat with my sister where we only share things related to learning Spanish. For example, if I pick up a new word like terremoto (earthquake) from Augustina’s Natural Phenomena series, I’ll type something like ‘terremoto = earthquake’ to share it with her.

My sister has been self-studying Spanish for a couple of years now, and I just started two months ago. It’s been really fun to tell her about my observations and discuss our progress together.

Anyway, how many hours progress would you say you had before you stopped mentally translating?