Literal translations

[viajero]

I find myself, when speaking or writing in Spanish, translating a little too literally. While I am loathe to think of a specific embarassing example, I'm assuming all of us non-native speakers deal with this issue.

So how (aside of listening to the podcasts) can we learn Spanish in such a way that we're not translating as we're thinking? I feel like I'm at the brink of taking my language skills to the next level, but this is holding me up.

I think in Spanish, dream in Spanish, even try to translate things on-the-fly like the sermon in church for practice - but it's still too literal. If I had just translated "on-the-fly" into Español, a native speaker would probably think I'd lost my mind!

Thoughts?

[Brian]

I'm quite guilty of this, also, much to my wife's amusement. It's easy to get into the trap of speaking "Spanglish."

For me, the more idiomatic expressions that I can learn, the better. Rather than trying a literal translation of common English sayings, it's more natural if you've taken the time to learn a culturally equivalent expression.