Module 1b - The History of the Bidirectional Translation

Hi there! Welcome back.

Since this is a course about the Bidirectional Translation, and I often talk about how I’ve used the method to learn over a dozen languages, you might be wondering:

“Where did the Bidirectional Translation come from?”

Allow me to take a few minutes to answer that question, and share the story of the language learning method that changed the course of my life, forever.

This is the history of the Bidirectional Translation method:

My first language was Italian. It was the language of my parents, my siblings, and everything else around me. In fact, it was the only language I spoke until I entered school, where I learned English and French as mandatory activities.

As a child, I found language classes to be frustrating. The content was boring, the pace was slow, and I didn’t enjoy being restricted to learning only the things that my teachers wanted me to learn.

Things started to change when I realized that I had the ability to take my language learning into my own hands. This happened gradually; for English, my parents hired a wonderfully-inspiring at-home tutor, and for French, I realized I could watch French movies and news at home.

Eventually, though, the time came to try completely breaking out on my own—to start independently learning a brand-new language, from scratch.

This was in 1996. I chose to learn German after seeing an ad on TV for a “book and audio” course in the language—De Agostini’s “Il Tedesco per Te”, which is Italian for “German for you”. I had wanted to learn German for some time, so the at-home course seemed like a perfect fit.

I loved the short, authentic audio dialogues, the colorful and interesting content, and the fact that the language was introduced in such a way that everything felt comprehensible.

As I read through these dialogues, and learned with them, I felt motivated to learn them deeply, so I could put their words and phrases to use whenever I used German in the future.

So one day I decided to experiment: I would take one German dialogue, and break it apart piece by piece, making sure I understood what everything meant, and how everything was supposed to sound.

Then, after I was confident in my understanding, I would take the whole German dialogue, and translate it into Italian— quite literally my own words. This allowed me to add some personal flair to the dialogues, and made them feel like they were my own, rather than written by someone else.

A few days later, I would revisit the dialogue, and give myself the ultimate challenge: translate my personalized Italian text back into German!

And let me tell you—this was a challenge! Though I would remember a nice amount of the original text, there were things that I struggled to remember, and some I just plain forgot!

I was proud that I could remember anything at all, though, so doing this gave me a nice sense of accomplishment.

After completing this two-way translation process on several of the course dialogues, I started to notice something strange: I was developing a great memory for German words and phrases!

Even when I wasn’t studying, entire sections of the German dialogues would suddenly pop into my head, as if I was playing them straight off the course cassettes. This was incredibly handy as I continued my way through the German course, and my understanding of German grew and grew and grew.

Eventually, I discovered I could have entire mock conversations with myself in German, and even think in German for minutes at a time—and I didn’t even know that much German yet!

So, I kept up the work. I learned German day in and day out for a year and a half, translating back and forth, and having fun all the while.

At the end of that year and a half, I spoke fluent German!

This was an eye-opening experience, as it was unlike anything I had ever felt in my years of learning English and French in public school classrooms.

It felt like I had skipped the line. Like I had a superpower.

So, of course, I had to try again.

I bought another course (this time for Spanish), and put it through its paces. I translated all the dialogues back, and forth, just as I had with the German ones.

A year and a half later? I spoke fluent Spanish!

They say “lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice”, so after all this success, I knew that this new method I was developing was truly something special, and not just a random stroke of luck.

After that, I spent more than a decade applying the Bidirectional Translation method to language after language, achieving impressive results in each in just about two years’ time.

Eventually, a curious thought entered my mind:

“I know the Bidirectional Translation works for me, but could this work for others, too”?

Luckily, I didn’t have to think about it for long. By that time, I had a reasonably successful YouTube channel where I would post language videos, and one day, a viewer contacted me asking if I would teach him what I knew.

I agreed, and just like that, I became a language coach.

Gradually, these one-on-one lessons revealed that my initial suspicions were true—the bidirectional translation didn’t just work for me, it just plain worked!

My first student, Donat, used it to reach an impressive level in Italian, and I saw the same results with later clients as well. Eventually, I amassed a base of hundreds of students from all over the world, and taught each one to use the Bidirectional Translation to learn a wide variety of languages.

It’s amazing, too, because before they learn the method, many of my students come to me convinced that they aren’t smart enough or talented enough to learn a language.

A few short months later, though, a shift happens. Armed with the Bidirectional Translation, they believe—just as I do—that anyone can learn a foreign language, so long as they consistently apply the right principles.

That’s what I’d like this course to do for you. Above and beyond just helping you learn your target language, I want this course to open you up to the world of life-changing possibilities that language learning can offer.

And one of those possibilities is the powerful belief that you are capable of much more than you might think.

The other possibilities—the travel, the job opportunities, the friendships, relationships, food, movies, literature, and much, much more—are all there too, just waiting for you to get started, and make them happen.

So what are you waiting for?

Let’s get started!