Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
So I apparently can't dredge it up at will, but my brain has a built-in translator that is still operational and intact, as long as I'm not paying too much attention to the processing step itself.

My mother does this (also with German, in fact). She thinks she doesn't remember anything, but if she's at dinner with German speakers and someone asks her to pass the cabbage in German, she does it without thinking about it.