I prefer to learn by reading in the target language and translating to English as I go along.
I definitely didn't see what I expected when opening a book for the first time -- I can already read or watch content in Italian. What I do today is pause (or stop reading) when I encounter a word I don't know.
What I expected when picking a level was definitely to see all Italian, though in retrospect I can imagine it's near impossible to do that without lots of paraphrasing.
But to me personally (much as I think this space needs more things, and that you OP are awesome for sharing it) that I'd not personally use something which wasn't entirely in my target language, as I find the way I've learned languages best so far to be similar to my current workflow, and over time I have to look up fewer and fewer words.
The limitation now is getting consistently high accuracy for whole sentences - but something I'll keep working on as the underlying technologies improve.