In my list of basic words to learn, I suggest learning subject pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they) using pictures. Instead of “‘Ich’ is the German word for ‘I,’” I suggest memorizing “‘Ich’ is the German word for [Guy pointing to himself].”
But this may seem like a trivial point. After all, it’s only a small handful of words, and what’s the harm in memorizing just a few translations?