The point of this technique is definitely not word for word translation; it is actually aimed at difficult to translate texts.
Sometimes translating words and thinking how to re-construct the word order of the sentences so that they sound "native" to the target language can be very strenuous - the greater the difference of syntax between the two laguages the more "RAM" it takes to the mind to think simultaneously on word meaning, overall text context, re-arranging word order and style. This is especially true with literature texts.
My technique is about doing some of those processes separately. The concrete processes I am suggesting to do separately are word translation and word order.
I take a sentence in the source language and pile up the translations of the words in it on the next line. Of course I translate the words in the context they had been used in the source language. But I do not care about word order and grammar yet. I do this for the whole text.
Next I look up some of the words that I have not been able to translate, not the way I wanted at least.
And then I begin transforming those piles of words into sentences in the word order which is proper for the target language. Here my mind is not occupied with thinking about the word translations. It is occupied only with word order, grammar and style and this helps me concentrate better.
Of course, after the initial piling up of word translations, in the process of re-arranging their order and changing them in different tenses, conjugations, etc, one will see that in the syntax he just constructed other word translations will fit better. Yet, again, this is an easier process - one of finding synonyms to already translated words not of translating words from the beginning.