The only guaranteed way of avoiding translation in your head that I know of, is to in fact never translate. Learn the bare minimum to get somewhere to start fro

The only guaranteed way of avoiding translation in your head that I know of, is to in fact never translate. Learn the bare minimum to get somewhere to start from, and get comprehensible input from there on. Something which you enjoy, something which fascinates you, and if it's a story, something which can get your mind images going, and this is where reading works. Something which can make you forget that it's actually words on a page, you're barely aware of that. That's when the mind starts to figure out things subconsciously. The problem is finding the input. Incidentally the above is exactly how I learned English. I didn't try to learn English, I just wanted to read the computer magazine or the fiction or whatever I was able to digest at the time. The side effect is that you'll be horrible at translation.. there's no connection to the same association.