Do you understand Spanish by breaking it into English or ... ?
For simple conversations and messages which are very basic I am able to read it in Spanish and immediately comprehend it. But for texts like Periodicos y Noticias y Pensamientos I need like a 0.5 second gap between reading breaking it into English as fast as possible in my head and then comprehending. I know hindi and after hearing it for 17 years don't need to break it down to English and just understand it as said ( I can't read newspapers and stuff in Hindi , just spoken - My spanish reading is better 
)
Do many beginners break down to English? I was listening to the recording of Nina and Valerie and could understand( mostly cause i was reading the text along with the voice ) well if they spoke slower and gave me that 0.5 second gap to comprehend.
8 Answers
What you are describing is what is known as "fluency". When you get to the point where a language conveys meaning into your mind without having to do translation detours through the brain, you have become fluent.
So far, there is only one way I know in which you can achieve that exalted state: practice, practice, practice. 
Everyone starts out translating in their head. It takes a lot of exposure and practice to start thinking in a new language. I've studied Spanish off and on since the mid-'70's, and lived in Venezuela for a couple of years way back then. Then I didn't use it much for a long time. For the last few years I've been using it more often here in Southern California, and have recently been making an effort to rebuild my vocabulary.
For the most part I can think in Spanish when reading, writing, talking and listening. But I still run across words I don't know, and that derails me. My mind code-switches back to English and I lose the thread. Hence the effort to rebuild my vocabulary.
It's like playing a musical instrument. It just takes a lot of time and practice before you can make music without thinking about where your fingers go.
Your brain has dentrites and for each fact that you connect or something you solve, your brain connects or grows more of them, allowing you to more easily retain that information or do what you need to do.
The thing is, with being fluent, or wanting your 0.5 second gap to go down to 0, you need to keep reading and hearing different phrases. So exercise your brain and your linguistic ability will improve.
Here's an example. For a while, it was hard for me to understand the phrase "lo que fue" because in English it would be "the one that was" which is four words. Naturally, we try to understand a second language in our first language. "the one" had to click in my head for me to be "lo" whenever I saw it in the context of "lo que." When I had seen it or heard it or repeated it enough times, eventually in my head, a dentrite grew or something in my brain happened for me to remember this. Once I remembered it, my fluency grew by that minute amount of information. And now, "lo que" doesn't trip me up, and I don't have to translate it anymore.
So, yes, people translate into their first language at first, until they have fully understood something and it becomes natural to them, building them in their fluency.
I am not very advanced in Spanish so to me the process still is slow but whatever I understand I get directly from Spanish, not by translating in my head. However I do not do so well on the tests on this site due to the fact that my brains are playing a trick on me...they are translating the test in French (go figure) then I have to translate to the English answer...bugs me. It's hard to explain but...I hear or read a Spanish word and I know what object it is (pictural in my head) but the word given to me by my brains is French.
Totally agree with you. I have the same problem. I grew up in Japan, and don't even have to think to understand what people are saying in Japanese. But when it comes to español... I can only comprehend even a few words if they speak slow enough. Listening is truly a difficult thing to learn.
I have found that if I read (or listen to TV/radio) while using a Spanish-Spanish dictionary to investigate words with which I am unfamiliar I tend to avoid (for the most part, but not entirely) this phenomenon of cross-talk between languages that you are speaking of.
I have purposely decided to try to avoid "translating" these words into English from Spanish because my primary goal is not to be able to translate Spanish into my native language but rather to be able to communicate and understand Spanish as it is being spoken or as I read it or speak it. To be honest, for the past couple of months, in regards to comprehension, I have tried to avoid like the plague any method that incorporates translation.
I am thoroughly convinced that the only way that I will be able to do this is if I go about making connections between words and phrases from Spanish to Spanish and by avoiding the more circuitous route of translation.
Aside from using the dictionary, I have also been seeking out grammar instruction in a Spanish-Spanish format, and I will often look up unfamiliar expressions, words or phrases by doing a google search and then comparing the context in which such expressions are being used.
I can't really say whether this is the best method for learning Spanish because I am still far from what I would consider fluent in Spanish (that is to say that it is still a bit something of a work in progress), but from what I can tell - so far, so good.
Two years ago I tried to read Harry potter and I did have to stop at almost every other sentence to decode it, especially if it involved pronouns. Although I understood each word alone, I had to translate it to English in my head to really understand who was doing what to whom, etc.
¡Pero eso se mejoró! Hace un año estaba leyendo "Twilight" en español y me di cuenta de que lo estaba leyendo sin traducirlo ni un poquito. Pude leer y comprender a la vez. Estaba orgullosa; por fin el español se convertía en mi segunda lengua.
Así que, anímate, la práctica hace al maestro. Sigue leyendo y algún día te darás cuenta de que no tienes por qué traducirlo todo,
I don't really translate words from Spanish to English when I hear them, I learn a diffrent way and it's rather strange. I do word association, which is weird because sometimes the words have nothing to do with each other! Por ejemplo, I learned the words boca y vaca because they're simular to each other in sound but have two completely diffrent meanings. Just like I was able to learn the word "ojos" because I heard someone say "No-no" about the same time and for some reason it stuck that way. I don't why I do it like that, but it seems to work for me :O)
