> In our mind the English word and its native translation have semantically different meanings.
Because they quite often have (I'd wager that more often than not).
To use your example, English "Insert" cuts through a different part of concept-space than Polish "Wstaw" (which is what usually ends up as a menu label). It's a fine translation up until you ask to insert a DVD - now you should say "Wsuń" or "Włóż".
And I don't think this is a problem. As I grow older I realize that this is how it should be. Personally, I think that the moment you stop mapping words from new language to the words of your native is when you actually start to be proficient in the language you're learning. Having mappings like "fork" -> "widelec" -> "<that pointy metal thing you use to eat>" in your head is totally wrong way to use the language. "fork" and "widelec" are two different labels referring to two different areas of concept-space, that happen to intersect somewhere in the area where you think about eating utensils.
That's why I keep my internal monologue (and speech, if people I'm talking with don't mind) switching constantly between English and Polish - there are concepts I can express with one language that I can't express in another, and any attempt at translation feels like lossy compression.
(and then I get tons of hate for occasionally saying "robi sens" instead of "ma sens"; I know what the proper translation of "makes sense" is, but the Polish expression emphasizes 'sense' as a property of things while English shows it as something that can be produced, and sometimes the idea I want to express is closer to the English than Polish version)
The problem arises when your girlfriend (or friend or whatever) visits you in the homeland and you suddenly find yourself struggling to find words because many of the things at home don't have English names. It becomes even worse when you have to act as translator between them and your family who doesn't speak English or doesn't speak it as well.
Yes, I had a lot of fun over the holidays ...
Even something as simple as "Did your mum like me?" becomes difficult to translate because your mum said X and X doesn't quite translate into English with all the connotations preserved.
Because they quite often have (I'd wager that more often than not).
To use your example, English "Insert" cuts through a different part of concept-space than Polish "Wstaw" (which is what usually ends up as a menu label). It's a fine translation up until you ask to insert a DVD - now you should say "Wsuń" or "Włóż".
And I don't think this is a problem. As I grow older I realize that this is how it should be. Personally, I think that the moment you stop mapping words from new language to the words of your native is when you actually start to be proficient in the language you're learning. Having mappings like "fork" -> "widelec" -> "<that pointy metal thing you use to eat>" in your head is totally wrong way to use the language. "fork" and "widelec" are two different labels referring to two different areas of concept-space, that happen to intersect somewhere in the area where you think about eating utensils.
That's why I keep my internal monologue (and speech, if people I'm talking with don't mind) switching constantly between English and Polish - there are concepts I can express with one language that I can't express in another, and any attempt at translation feels like lossy compression.
(and then I get tons of hate for occasionally saying "robi sens" instead of "ma sens"; I know what the proper translation of "makes sense" is, but the Polish expression emphasizes 'sense' as a property of things while English shows it as something that can be produced, and sometimes the idea I want to express is closer to the English than Polish version)