---
name: two-worlds-translator
description: "Bridge the gap between your home culture and your adopted one — explain your immigrant parents to your partner (and vice versa), navigate the code-switch that exhausts you, and handle the specific collisions (holidays, money, marriage expectations, 'when are you coming home') without betraying either side. Use when someone says 'my partner doesn't understand my family', 'I'm caught between two cultures', 'help me explain this to my parents', or is a first/second-gen immigrant or third-culture kid. Produces a translation of the specific collision, scripts for both directions, and a boundary that honors both worlds."
homepage: https://mohitagw15856.github.io/pm-claude-skills/skill/two-worlds-translator.html
metadata:
  {
    "openclaw": { "emoji": "🧠" }
  }
---

# Two Worlds Translator Skill

Living between cultures is a permanent translation job that no one trained you for:
your parents' world runs on obligations, indirectness, and expectations your partner
reads as controlling; your adopted world runs on independence and directness your
parents read as cold or disrespectful. You're the cable between them, and it's
exhausting — every holiday, every "when are you giving us grandchildren," every money
conversation is a potential collision. This skill translates a specific collision in
both directions, gives you the scripts, and helps you hold a boundary that doesn't
require choosing one world and amputating the other. The goal isn't to pick a side —
it's to stop being torn in half.

## What This Skill Produces

- A **two-way translation** of the specific collision: what each side actually means
  and fears beneath the surface behavior (your dad's "you've changed" often means "I'm
  scared I'm losing you"; your partner's "why do you let them?" often means "I'm scared
  of losing you to them")
- **Scripts in both directions**: how to explain your family's world to your partner
  so they see love not control, and how to talk to your family in a way that lands as
  respect not rebellion
- A **boundary that honors both**: the third path between "obey the family and lose
  yourself" and "cut them off and lose your roots" — the boundary that keeps the
  relationship and the self
- A **code-switch relief note**: naming the specific exhaustion and where you can drop
  the switching, so the translation labor stops being invisible and total

## Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):
- The specific collision (a holiday expectation, a money obligation, a marriage/kids
  question, a "come home," a partner-meets-parents dread) — concrete beats abstract
- The two worlds: rough cultural context of the family, and of the adopted culture/
  partner, without stereotyping (ask what's true for THIS family, not the culture)
- What each side has actually said, and what the user suspects each is really afraid of
- What the user wants: to keep both relationships intact, mostly — and where they
  refuse to bend

## Framework

1. **Translate to the fear underneath, not the behavior on top.** Cross-cultural
   collisions almost always have the same root on both sides — love expressed in
   incompatible dialects, and fear of loss. The parent's control and the partner's
   frustration are often both "I'm afraid this person is being taken from me."
   Surfacing the shared fear defuses more than any tactic.
2. **Explain the family's world as a logic, not a problem.** To the partner:
   translate obligation-culture as a coherent value system (interdependence, respect,
   sacrifice) rather than dysfunction — so they stop seeing villains. Specific,
   non-stereotyping ("in my family, X means love") because the partner's contempt is
   usually just untranslated unfamiliarity.
3. **Speak to the family in their dialect of respect.** To the parents: frame the
   user's independence in terms *they* value — not "I'm my own person" (reads as
   rejection) but "I'm building the life you sacrificed for" (reads as honoring). Same
   boundary, packaged as continuity of the family's own values rather than a break
   from them.
4. **Find the third path.** The false binary is obey-and-erase-yourself vs
   rebel-and-lose-them. The boundary that works usually keeps the relationship warm
   while declining a specific demand, framed as "I love you AND I'm choosing X" — and
   accepts that some disappointment is survivable and not the same as rupture. Name
   what the user genuinely won't bend on, and hold it kindly.
5. **Name the code-switch tax.** The exhaustion of being the permanent translator is
   real and usually unspoken. Acknowledge it, identify where the user can put the
   switching down (with whom they can be undivided), and note that being the bridge is
   a labor, not a defect — so they stop blaming themselves for being tired.

## Output Format

```
## The collision, translated both ways
What your family means/fears: … · What your partner (or adopted world) means/fears: …
The shared root: [usually the same fear, in two dialects]

## Scripts
To your partner (family's world as love, not control): …
To your family (your path in their dialect of respect): …

## The boundary that keeps both
[The third path: the specific "I love you AND I'm choosing X" · what you won't bend on ·
that some disappointment ≠ rupture]

## The code-switch tax
[Naming the labor · where you can stop switching · you're a bridge, not broken]
```

## Quality Checks

- [ ] The translation reaches the fear/value under the behavior on both sides, not
      just the surface conflict
- [ ] The family's world is explained to the partner as a coherent logic, without
      stereotyping — built from THIS family, not the culture in general
- [ ] The family script frames the boundary in the family's own values, not as
      Western-individualist rejection
- [ ] A genuine third path exists (not "pick a side"), with the user's real
      non-negotiable named
- [ ] The code-switch labor is acknowledged, not ignored

## Anti-Patterns

- [ ] Do not stereotype either culture — ask what's true for this specific family;
      "your culture is X" is both wrong and insulting
- [ ] Do not take a side or frame one world as backward and the other as enlightened
      — both are coherent, both love in their dialect
- [ ] Do not counsel cutting off family as the default modern answer, nor total
      submission as the default traditional one — the third path is the point
- [ ] Do not pretend all disappointment is avoidable — sometimes a boundary
      disappoints, and surviving that is part of the skill
- [ ] Do not treat serious situations (abuse, forced marriage, real coercion) as a
      translation problem — name plainly when something needs safety help, not scripts

## Related

[[coming-out-rehearsal]] when identity and culture collide; [[aging-parent-talks]]
for the caregiving version of the two-worlds pull; [[nt-translator]] shares the
two-way-translation engine; [[faith-transition-companion]] when religion is the
third party.