Executive Summary — Jeremiah (English → Bengali) Translation Requirements

Why it matters

Jeremiah anchors its entire message — judgment, lament, and the New Covenant promise of Jeremiah 31:31–34 — to God’s covenant name, יהוה, a foundational element the baseline Romans Bengali package never had to address because the New Testament works only with generic “God” (ঈশ্বর) and “Lord” (প্রভু). Getting the Bengali rendering right here is not a stylistic nicety: সদাপ্রভু is the theological engine driving every judgment-and-restoration oracle in all 52 chapters, and losing that distinction anywhere would quietly erode the very covenant-relationship argument the book exists to make. Add to that Jeremiah’s collision-prone idolatry vocabulary (প্রতিমা, the same word Bengali Hindus use for Durga/Kali festival images) and its legal-economic redemption vocabulary (গাল/দ্রোর, which shares a root with the baseline’s forbidden soteriological মুক্তি), and this book carries a materially higher translation-risk profile than the Romans curriculum it extends.

Key findings

• 116 total glossary terms now govern Bengali Jeremiah translation: 26 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 90 newly introduced by this book.
• 58 terms (18 Critical + 40 High) require mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence — roughly half of the full glossary.
• 12 of 14 Jeremiah doctrines (6 Critical + 6 High) are routed to human theologian review; only 2 (Medium) route to native speaker review, and zero doctrines qualify for automated-only review — a materially stricter profile than typical NT curricula.
• 7 terms require a translator note at every single occurrence, not merely on first use — a new “Always-Annotate” tier this curriculum introduces beyond the baseline’s standard practice: yada (relational “know”), lev in load-bearing passages (“heart”), the untranslatable בָּעַלְתִּי/Baal wordplay, ga’al and derror (kinsman-redemption/manumission), the ironic false-peace slogan, and the Queen of Heaven title.
• Full 52-chapter coverage confirmed: every chapter reviewed; chapters with no new doctrine (12, 22, 35, 40, 41, 45, 52) explicitly logged as reviewed-continuation, not silently skipped.

Risks

• Divine-name collapse (Critical, systemic): Any drift of সদাপ্রভু toward generic ঈশ্বর or প্রভু anywhere in the 700+ occurrences erodes the covenant-name argument the whole book depends on.
• Idolatry-term backfire (High, cultural): প্রতিমা is the identical word for ritually consecrated Durga/Kali festival images; under-fenced use risks Bengali readers hearing a blanket anti-Hindu polemic rather than Jeremiah’s specific ancient covenant-lawsuit argument.
• Soteriological cross-contamination (Critical, mechanical): গাল/দ্রোর (legal-economic redemption/manumission, chs. 32, 34) sit one root away from the baseline’s forbidden মুক্তি; a missed mandatory note in even one occurrence risks either false salvation-theology over-reading or an unexplained gap.
• Heart/knowing flattening (High, systemic): Bengali হৃদয়’s devotional-emotional skew and জানা’s default cognitive-only sense both threaten to subtly undercut the New Covenant’s central claim (31:33–34) that God transforms the whole inner person and grants relational, not merely factual, knowledge of himself.
• Lament euphemism (High, register): Cultural pressure toward deferential divine address (from both Hindu bhakti and Muslim adab conventions) risks softening Jeremiah’s raw complaints (20:7, “you have deceived me”) into pious understatement, erasing the Weeping Prophet doctrine’s own model of honest lament.
• Messianic title fragmentation (Critical): ধার্মিক শাখা and সদাপ্রভু আমাদের ধার্মিকতা must never be split from their divine-name/righteousness components; any fragmentation weakens the text’s unusually direct anticipation of Christ’s deity.

Opportunities

• নতুন নিয়ম convergence: Jeremiah 31:31’s “new covenant” naturally converges with the Bengali Bible’s own existing name for the New Testament (নতুন নিয়ম) — a built-in teaching bridge rather than a coincidence to explain away.
• Individual Responsibility bridge: Both Qur’anic teaching (no soul bears another’s burden) and Jewish rabbinic tradition affirm individual accountability, giving Bengali Muslim-background readers a genuine, ready-made point of resonance for Jeremiah 31:29–30 — provided the corrective pairing with the rejected proverb is always retained.
• Forward cross-curriculum consistency groundwork: This analysis proactively flags terms (যুগ/yoke, জীবন্ত জলের উৎস/living water, পালকরা/shepherds, যাজক/priests, রাহেলের বিলাপ/Rachel weeping) that will recur with different or complementary valence in future Matthew, John, and Hebrews curricula — reducing future rework.
• Bounded baseline exceptions already resolved: Three deliberate, documented exceptions to baseline caution (মন্দির permitted for the literal OT Temple; স্রষ্টা permitted as a descriptive creative-action term; বলি/বলিদান retained as unavoidable sacrificial vocabulary) prevent Phase 2 workers from over-applying NT-context cautions to distinct OT referents.

Recommended actions

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json (Jeremiah) and assets/bible_term_registry.json (Jeremiah) — not the Romans-only files — as the enforced database for all Phase 2 Jeremiah segment translation.
2. Configure Phase 2 tooling with the “Always-Annotate” tier as a distinct enforcement category above ordinary Critical/High flagging, per analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
3. Route all 58 Critical/High terms and all 12 Critical/High doctrines to human theologian review by default; do not permit automated-only approval for any Jeremiah segment touching these.
4. Brief theologian reviewers specifically on the בָּעַלְתִּি (Jer 31:32) husband/disregarded ambiguity, which requires a fresh exegetical decision at every occurrence rather than a one-time glossary ruling.
5. Carry forward the five documented cross-curriculum forward-flags (yoke, living water, shepherds, priests, Rachel) into the requirements documents for Matthew, John, and Hebrews when those curricula are built, to preserve valence distinctions established here.