Executive Summary — Galatians — English → Assamese

Why it matters

Galatians is Paul’s most polemical letter, and its central argument — right standing before God comes by faith alone, apart from law-works — runs directly into the destination culture’s dominant religious grammar. Assamese carries ready-made vocabulary for “law,” “works,” “curse,” “freedom,” “circumcision,” “love,” and “new creation,” but nearly every one of those words already belongs to a competing framework: Hindu karma-merit theology, Ekasarana Dharma’s avatar-descent Christology-analogue, Vaishnavite prem-bhakti devotional love, moksha-liberation, or the Islamic khatna rite. This curriculum extends the Romans Language Package into terrain with a higher concentration of Critical-risk collisions than Romans itself — Galatians packs justification, incarnation, crucifixion-union, and the letter’s own unique circumcision/new-creation controversy into six short chapters. Getting this right protects the letter’s entire argument; getting it wrong at even one load-bearing term (কৰ্ম left unanchored, অৱতাৰ substituted for দেহধাৰণ, মুক্তি substituted for redemption) can invert the doctrine Paul is defending.

Key findings

• 15 doctrines mapped across all 6 chapters (no chapter silently omitted): 4 Critical, 9 High, 2 Medium, 0 Low risk.
• 13 doctrines require mandatory human theologian review; 2 require native speaker review; none are automated-only — a materially higher theologian-review burden than a typical curriculum, driven by Galatians’ doctrinal density.
• At the term level, this Phase 1 output fixes 86 Galatians-specific terms in the term registry plus 29 terms inherited exactly from the Romans baseline (translation_memory.json, Section A+B combined), for a working glossary of roughly 115 enforced terms.
• Of those, 15 terms carry Critical risk and 28 carry High risk — 43 terms (roughly 37% of the total glossary) require theologian-level scrutiny at every occurrence.
• The core passage (Galatians 2:15-21) alone contains 3 Critical-risk term clusters: the triple-occurring justification verb (2:16), the “faith of/in Christ” genitive ambiguity (2:16, 2:20), and “crucified with Christ” (2:19-20) — the letter’s doctrinal anchor concentrated in seven verses.
• Galatians introduces 11 entirely new Critical/High-risk collision points with no Romans-baseline precedent: works of the law (κρμ-anchoring), crucified with Christ, redemption (compound required, মুক্তি forbidden), circumcision (Islamic khatna collision), idolatry (names mainstream Assamese Hindu practice directly), love/agapē (prem-bhakti collision), freedom (political/moksha collision), elemental spirits (pancha-bhuta collision), seed/offspring (singular-referent argument), new creation (cyclical cosmology collision), and the flesh/Spirit ethical-vs-physical disambiguation.

Risks

• Highest risk: bare, unanchored কৰ্ম anywhere in 2:16/3:2/3:5/3:10 imports Hindu karma-merit theology into the exact verses where Paul refutes works-righteousness. Mitigation: automatic Critical-tier failure rule, not just a flag.
• Second-highest risk: অৱতাৰ-family vocabulary (including the softened cognate অৱতীর্ণ, documented in circulating paraphrase literature) at Galatians 4:4’s incarnation text — this is a second, independent NT incarnation passage outside the Gospels, doubling the baseline’s already-Critical incarnation collision risk.
• চুন্নৎ (circumcision) carries a live, immediate ambiguity risk because the identical loanword names the Islamic khatna rite in Assamese usage — every occurrence needs its Genesis 17 anchor note, not just the first.
• প্ৰেম (agapē-love) and স্বাধীনতা (freedom) have no viable single-word substitute — both risks must be managed entirely through mandatory translator notes, which places a documentation burden on Phase 2 that Romans’ term set did not require to the same degree.
• মূৰ্তিপূজা (idolatry, 5:20) names mainstream Assamese Hindu/Vaishnavite devotional practice directly; the PRD’s non-softening mandate requires full doctrinal force in the translation text itself, creating unavoidable pastoral sensitivity that must be managed in teaching notes, never in Scripture’s own wording.
• Cult/sect renderings in circulation (NWT-style “torture stake” for cross, personal-name substitution for “Lord,” avatar-cadence phrasing for “sent forth his Son”) are documented and must be actively screened against in back-translation review.

Opportunities

• Galatians’ sharp Law/Grace antithesis gives this curriculum an unusually clear teaching opportunity to distinguish biblical grace from both the boon-for-devotion (বৰ) framework and Ekasarana kripa (grace-like divine favor received through naam-practice) — a distinction Romans introduces but Galatians states most starkly (2:21, 3:2-5, 5:4).
• Galatians 3:28’s unqualified Jew/Gentile/slave/free/male/female equality statement, read alongside Sankardev’s own historically caste-inclusive naam-bhakti reform, offers a natural bridge for teaching materials to affirm genuine partial cultural resonance while clarifying the distinct christological ground of Paul’s claim.
• The letter’s Fruit of the Spirit list (5:22-23) and Bearing One Another’s Burdens material (6:1-10) carry comparatively low collision risk (0 Low-risk doctrines overall, but these two doctrines contain most of the glossary’s Low-risk individual terms) and can be prioritized for early Phase 2 production while Critical-tier passages complete extended theologian review.
• Because 43 of ~115 glossary terms are shared in structure (compound-phrase pattern, anchoring-word pattern) with terms already validated in the Romans baseline, Phase 2 reviewers can reuse Romans-tested review heuristics (e.g., “never let X float free of its anchor word”) rather than developing review methodology from scratch.

Recommended actions

1. Load both the Romans baseline and this Galatians extension’s translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json into every Phase 2 worker before any segment translation begins; treat any bare-কৰ্ম or অৱতাৰ-family back-translation match as an automatic re-translation trigger, not merely a review flag.
2. Route all 13 theologian-required doctrines — and the core passage (2:15-21) as a single non-splittable review unit — through human theologian review before Phase 2 sign-off; route Paul’s Apostleship and Bearing One Another’s Burdens through native speaker review.
3. Confirm the pending YouVersion Assamese Bible version ID (currently a placeholder token, per 05_translation_landscape.md §5) before generating any production hyperlinks.
4. Ensure every mandatory first-occurrence translator note (দেহধাৰণ, চুন্নৎ, প্ৰেম, স্বাধীনতা, বংশ, জগতৰ মৌলিক আত্মিক শক্তি, নতুন সৃষ্টি, দাস, অভিশাপ/অভিশপ্ত, মায়াবিদ্যা/জাদুবিদ্যা) is present and reviewer-visible before a document is marked complete.
5. Direct all pastoral/non-confrontational framing for idolatry and sorcery vice-list terms into teaching notes exclusively, preserving full doctrinal force in the translation text itself, per the PRD’s non-softening mandate.

This summary extends, and must never contradict, assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, and analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md (all Galatians), and the baseline Romans Language Package.