I’m a native English speaker, and I’ve lived in Italy for over 25 years, so English and Italian are part of my daily life.
I was born and raised in Québec. I should speak French effortlessly.
And yet, I still struggle with it.
Not because I don’t know the language.
Because I don’t have enough exposure anymore.
When I’m tired or under pressure, my French slows down. I search. I translate. Sometimes I avoid speaking altogether. And every time it happens, I’m reminded of something important.
Fluency isn’t about where you’re from or how well you once spoke.
It’s about how often your brain gets to use the language in real life.
Learning Spanish has made this even clearer. It put me back in the exact place many professionals find themselves at work: capable, smart, and still translating in their head when the stakes are high.
So when someone tells me, “You just need to think in English,” I smile. Because that’s not how it works.
At work, translating usually shows up in very specific moments.
You know what you want to say. The idea is clear. But while you’re building the sentence in your head, the meeting moves on. Someone else speaks. The moment is gone.
That’s not a language problem. It’s a timing problem.
When I started learning Spanish, I noticed something interesting. I could talk about simple things quite naturally. Ordering food, making plans, reacting. But the moment I wanted to express doubt, disagreement, or nuance, I slowed down. I translated. Word by word. And I felt it.
The same thing happens in English at work.
We don’t translate everything. We translate what feels risky.
Opinions. Concerns. Pushback. Anything that could expose us.
What actually helped me was not more vocabulary. It was recognising patterns.
In Spanish, instead of building sentences from scratch, I began to rely on ready pieces. Short, imperfect, but available. Once those pieces were there, my brain stopped asking for permission. It just used them.
English works the same way.
When you translate, you’re trying to be precise.
When you think in English, you’re trying to be functional.
There’s a big difference.
I see professionals who speak excellent English still translating in meetings because they want to sound competent. The irony is that translation slows them down and makes them sound less confident.
Thinking in English doesn’t mean you suddenly become fast or fluent. It means the sentence arrives with the thought, not after it.
And that only happens when your brain has seen that sentence enough times in real situations.
So if you’re translating at work, don’t fight it. Don’t judge it.
Notice where it happens. That’s the signal.
Those are the moments to train.
And yes, every new language puts you back at the beginning. Even when you’ve been fluent before. That’s normal. That’s human.
Fluency isn’t a switch.
It’s a slow letting go of translation, one situation at a time.
