Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: Joel (English → Bengali)
Curriculum: Joel 1–3 (core passage: Joel 2:28–32)
Destination language: Bengali (Bangla script; Bangladesh Bible Society / Bible Society of India register)
Depends on: baseline Romans translation_memory.json, baseline bible_term_registry.json, baseline doctrine_risk_registry.json, and this curriculum’s 08_core_glossary.md / extended bible_term_registry.json
Purpose: Identify, ahead of Phase 2 segment translation, where Bengali (a) lacks precise vocabulary for Joel’s theology, (b) has vocabulary that collides with Hindu-majority and Muslim-majority devotional/ritual registers already flagged in the baseline, and (c) requires a transliteration vs. paraphrase decision. This document governs glossary construction and Phase 2 flagging logic; it does not itself alter any baseline-established rendering.
0. Method and Scope
This analysis covers all three chapters of Joel. Joel is short (73 verses) but doctrinally dense and image-heavy, and it sits in an unusual position for this pipeline: it is an Old Testament prophetic book whose central passage (2:28–32) is quoted verbatim in the New Testament (Acts 2:17–21; Romans 10:13), so its Bengali rendering must be forward-compatible with the existing Romans Language Package, not just internally consistent. Every gap identified below is cross-checked against:
- The baseline Romans
translation_memory.json(terms that MUST be reused unchanged: পবিত্র আত্মা, পরিত্রাণ, পবিত্র, ভাববাণী/ভাববাদী, পরজাতি, আহুত/আহ্বান, ঈশ্বর). - This curriculum’s extended
bible_term_registry.json(new Joel-specific entries: সদাপ্রভু, সদাপ্রভুর দিন, ঢেলে দেব, দর্শন, চেসেদ/দয়া, গভীর অনুরাগ, পঙ্গপাল, etc.). - The five assigned doctrines: The Day of the Lord, Repentance and Return to God, The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit, The Locust Plague as Divine Judgment, Restoration and Blessing after Repentance.
Chapters reviewed for completeness even where they contribute no new lexical gap:
- Joel 1 (locust plague, lament, call to fasting) — full coverage below.
- Joel 2:1–27 (Day of the LORD warning; call to repentance; God’s relenting and material restoration) — full coverage below.
- Joel 2:28–32 (core passage: outpouring of the Spirit; Day of the LORD; salvation) — full coverage below, treated with the greatest granularity as the theological anchor.
- Joel 3 (judgment on the nations; restoration of Zion) — full coverage below; contributes the judgment-on-nations and final-restoration vocabulary that frames the core passage’s “Day of the LORD” claim on a book-wide canvas.
No chapter is silently omitted. Joel 3, though outside the core passage, is retained in full because it supplies the covenantal-justice and final-restoration horizon that gives 2:28–32’s promise its point (the Spirit is poured out on those who will be preserved through the very judgment chapter 3 describes).
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
| Doctrine | Available Bengali Terms | Weaknesses / Collision Risks | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Day of the Lord | সদাপ্রভুর দিন (established OT Tetragrammaton convention + দিন); বিচারের দিন (day of judgment, generic) | বিচারের দিন alone is available and grammatically natural but strips away the covenant-name anchor, making the term interchangeable with any generic day of reckoning. Hindu-background readers may default to reading it as one more turn of a cyclical cosmic-age (yuga) transition; Muslim-background readers may collapse it into কিয়ামতের দিন (Last Day) without the specific covenant-relational dimension Joel gives it. Bengali has no ready-made third option that avoids both risks. | Fix সদাপ্রভুর দিন as the single, invariant rendering at every occurrence (1:15; 2:1, 2, 11, 31; 3:14). Never substitute বিচারের দিন or কিয়ামতের দিন. Attach the qualifier মহৎ ও ভয়ংকর wherever the Hebrew pairs “great and awesome” so the recurring formula stays visibly linked across chapters. First occurrence (1:15) should carry a translator note establishing the term as a fixed technical phrase, not a stylistic description. |
| Repentance and Return to God | ফিরে আসা (return); মন পরিবর্তন (change of mind/heart, NT metanoia-adjacent); তওবা (Islamic idiom, rejected); প্রায়শ্চিত্ত (Hindu ritual expiation, rejected) | Bengali’s devotional vocabulary for “repentance” is heavily colonized by two transactional frameworks already flagged in the baseline: তওবা presumes a submission-and-merit accounting before Allah, and প্রায়শ্চিত্ত presumes ritual austerity that removes accumulated guilt. Neither captures Joel’s relational picture of turning back to a Person one already has a bond with. মন পরিবর্তন risks sounding like a private internal decision divorced from the corporate, liturgical (fasting, weeping, assembly) response Joel 1–2 actually calls for. | Use আমার কাছে ফিরে আসো (2:12) as the anchor clause, framing return relationally, not transactionally. Retain the inward/outward contrast of 2:13 explicitly (হৃদয় বিদীর্ণ কর, বস্ত্র নয়) rather than allowing it to be flattened into generic sorrow. Keep the corporate fasting/assembly vocabulary (উপবাস পবিত্ররূপে ঘোষণা কর, পবিত্র সভা) tied to this doctrine so repentance in Joel reads as covenantal-communal, not merely private feeling. |
| The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit | ঢেলে দেব (pour out); পবিত্র আত্মা (baseline, reused); দর্শন (vision); স্বপ্ন (dream); ভাববাণী করবে (prophesy) | ঢালা-family verbs are the standard Bengali vocabulary for puja libation (milk/water/oil poured onto a deity’s image); দর্শন is a heavily loaded Hindu devotional term for seeing/being seen by a deity’s icon or a living guru. Both risk redirecting the reader’s devotional imagination toward Hindu ritual practice at the exact moment the text is asserting something structurally different: God pouring Spirit onto people (not people offering something up to an image), and Spirit-given prophetic disclosure (not devotee-initiated darshan-seeking). | Retain ঢেলে দেব and দর্শন as the closest available renderings (no better lexical alternative exists), but mandate a translator note at first occurrence of each (2:28) clarifying direction-of-action (ঢেলে দেব) and source-and-nature (দর্শন = God-given prophetic sight, not devotional darshan). Reuse পবিত্র আত্মা and ভাববাণী করবে from baseline without modification — these terms are already fenced. |
| The Locust Plague as Divine Judgment | পঙ্গপাল (locust, single generic term); দুর্যোগ/বিপর্যয় (calamity/disaster, generic) | Hebrew supplies four distinct locust-stage/species terms (אַרְבֶּה, יֶלֶק, חָסִיל, גָּזָם) building an escalating four-wave devastation image; Bengali has only one generic word, পঙ্গপাল. There is also a standing risk of readers (from either religious background) processing the plague as a purely natural agricultural disaster — bad weather, an ordinary pest outbreak — rather than as an intentional instrument of divine judgment, since পঙ্গপাল/দুর্যোগ carry no built-in agency marker. | Render all four Hebrew terms as পঙ্গপাল with added descriptive qualifiers per stage (e.g., “যে পঙ্গপাল অবশিষ্ট রাখে,” “বাড়ন্ত পঙ্গপাল”) to preserve the escalation rhetorically even though the lexical distinction is lost; flag 1:4 for a translator note explaining the four-stage original. Critically, ensure every occurrence retains explicit agency language — “তাঁর সৈন্যদল” (his army, 2:11) — so the plague is never allowed to read as impersonal misfortune. |
| Restoration and Blessing after Repentance | শস্য/নতুন দ্রাক্ষারস/তেল (grain/new wine/oil, fixed covenant-blessing triad); আর লজ্জিত হবে না (never again put to shame); বসবাস করবেন (dwell); ঝর্ণা প্রবাহিত হবে (fountain flowing) | The material-blessing vocabulary itself is low-risk and shared broadly, but “shame removal” intersects directly with the strong honor/shame social dynamics already flagged as high-salience in Bengali Hindu and Muslim contexts alike; a flat, literal rendering risks being read as mere private emotional relief rather than the removal of covenantal/communal disgrace before God and community that the text intends. “Dwelling” (শাখান) also sits close to, but must be kept distinct from, the baseline’s incarnation caution (দেহধারণ). | Keep the grain/wine/oil triad fixed as a formula across 2:19 and 2:24. Render লজ্জিত হবে না with framing (in accompanying study notes, not the verse text itself) that names it as removal of covenantal/communal disgrace, not private embarrassment. Use বসবাস করবেন/নিবাস করবেন for God’s Zion-dwelling and explicitly do NOT use দেহধারণ-adjacent vocabulary here — these are two different doctrines (covenantal presence vs. incarnation) that must not visually or lexically merge for the reader. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
Joel’s translation challenge in Bengali is bimodal: some doctrinal concepts have no adequate word at all (a true lexical gap), while others have too many available words, all of them theologically compromised (a crowded, contested semantic neighborhood requiring active fencing). Both categories are tracked separately because they require different Phase 2 handling — gaps require paraphrase/compounding strategies; crowded neighborhoods require explicit forbidden-term lists and translator notes.
2.1 True Lexical Gaps (missing vocabulary)
| Concept | Gap | Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Four-stage locust terminology (1:4) | Bengali has one generic word (পঙ্গপাল) where Hebrew has four | Generic term + descriptive qualifiers + translator note (see §1 above) |
| חֶסֶד / chesed as covenant-loyalty-love (2:13) | No single Bengali word carries both “affection” and “binding covenant fidelity” simultaneously; দয়া alone reads as generic pity/kindness | Compound gloss দয়া (নিয়মের বিশ্বস্ত প্রেম) as recorded in the term registry; recommend formal promotion to cross-curriculum translation memory given certain recurrence in future OT material (Ruth, Hosea, Psalms) |
| קַנָּא / qanna as protective divine jealousy (2:18) | Bengali’s one obvious candidate, ঈর্ষা, denotes sinful envy/covetousness in ordinary usage and is unusable for God’s character | Paraphrase: গভীর অনুরাগ (“deep zealous love”) or উদ্যোগী হলেন (“became ardently active”), with mandatory translator note distinguishing this from ঈর্ষা |
| ”Rend hearts, not garments” idiom (2:13) | No existing fixed Bengali idiom captures the inward/outward mourning-ritual contrast; a literal rendering is intelligible but not idiomatic | Literal-but-clarified rendering (হৃদয় বিদীর্ণ কর, বস্ত্র নয়) retained deliberately, since Bengali readers in a culture with highly visible ritual mourning practices need the contrast spelled out rather than assumed |
| אַחֲרֵי־כֵן / “afterward” as an eschatological technical marker (2:28), later glossed by Acts 2:17 as “in the last days” | Bengali পরে is a purely temporal connective with no inherent prophetic-fulfillment weight; a plain rendering forecloses the reader’s ability to later connect this to “last days” language | Render তখন তার পরে (a slightly heavier phrase than bare পরে) and flag for a study-note bridge to the Acts 2 “last days” language, so the connection is not lost when this curriculum is read alongside a future Acts curriculum |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (too many compromised options — require fencing)
| Concept | Competing Bengali Options | Why Each Is Compromised | Fence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pouring out the Spirit | ঢেলে দেব / অর্ঘ্য ঢালা / সেচন করা | অর্ঘ্য ঢালা is the specific technical term for pouring a puja libation onto a deity’s image; সেচন করা suggests agricultural irrigation, losing personal/relational force | Use ঢেলে দেব only; forbid অর্ঘ্য ঢালা and সেচন করা explicitly in Phase 2 validation; mandatory translator note at 2:28 on first occurrence |
| Prophetic vision | দর্শন / দৃষ্টি / প্রত্যাদেশ | দর্শন carries strong Hindu devotional-icon/guru connotations; দৃষ্টি is too weak/generic (simply “sight/glance”); প্রত্যাদেশ (revelation) is theologically accurate but less standard in existing Bengali Bible usage for this specific term | Use দর্শন (best available option despite the risk) with a mandatory clarifying translator note; do not silently substitute দৃষ্টি or প্রত্যাদেশ without flagging the deviation |
| Repentance | ফিরে আসা / তওবা / প্রায়শ্চিত্ত / মন পরিবর্তন | তওবা = Islamic submission-merit framework; প্রায়শ্চিত্ত = Hindu ritual-expiation framework; মন পরিবর্তন = private cognitive change only, no covenantal-return sense | Use ফিরে আসা exclusively for শুব; explicitly forbid তওবা and প্রায়শ্চিত্ত; reserve মন পরিবর্তন only for supplementary NT metanoia material outside Joel, never as a Joel substitute |
| Fasting | উপবাস / রোজা / ব্রত | রোজা = Islamic Ramadan-idiom fasting within submission-merit framework; ব্রত = Hindu votive/bargaining fast made to secure a deity’s favor | Use উপবাস পবিত্ররূপে ঘোষণা কর exclusively; forbid রোজা and ব্রত |
| Divine jealousy/zeal | গভীর অনুরাগ / ঈর্ষা / উদ্যোগী হলেন | ঈর্ষা = sinful envy in ordinary usage; unusable for God | Forbid ঈর্ষা categorically for God’s character across the whole curriculum, not just Joel; use গভীর অনুরাগ as primary rendering |
| ”Calling” (two directions in one verse, 2:32) | ডাকা (human→God) / আহ্বান-family (God→human, baseline-reserved) | Baseline reserves আহুত/আহ্বান exclusively for God’s summons to humans (see baseline called/calling entries); Joel 2:32 contains BOTH directions in adjacent clauses, creating a real risk of the translator defaulting to one verb for both and erasing the reversal | Mandatory dual-verb fence within 2:32: সদাপ্রভুর নামে ডাকা (human calling on God, 2:32a) vs. সদাপ্রভু আহ্বান করেন (God calling humans, 2:32b) — never interchange these two within the verse |
| God/Lord vocabulary | সদাপ্রভু (Tetragrammaton) / প্রভু (baseline NT κύριος) / ঈশ্বর (baseline “God”) / ভগবান / আল্লাহ (both already rejected) | Three legitimate Bengali Christian terms (সদাপ্রভু, প্রভু, ঈশ্বর) map onto three distinct source referents (YHWH the covenant name; generic/NT “Lord”; generic “God”); Joel is OT and uses YHWH constantly, so risk is collapsing সদাপ্রভু into the more familiar baseline প্রভু out of habit from Romans work | Fence explicitly: সদাপ্রভু ONLY for יְהוָה; never substitute প্রভু for it within this curriculum, even though both ultimately point to the same God; flag any occurrence where a translator reverts to প্রভু for a YHWH clause |
| Nations (גּוֹיִם) in Joel 3 | পরজাতি (baseline missional register) / জাতিগণ (political-entity register) | Baseline’s পরজাতি was established for Romans’ missional “Gentiles” sense; Joel 3 uses גּוֹיִם in a judicial, judgment-on-nations register, a different pragmatic context than Romans’ inclusion-of-Gentiles register, even though both may share the same Bengali word | Permit both পরজাতি and জাতিগণ, decided per-occurrence by native-speaker judgment (not fixed lexically as in other terms above); flag every Joel 3 occurrence for this review rather than defaulting silently to the baseline’s পরজাতি |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Item | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| יְהוָה (YHWH) | Established-convention rendering, not transliteration: সদাপ্রভু | সদাপ্রভু is not a transliteration of the Hebrew sound but the settled Bengali Old Testament convention (literally “the ever-true Lord/Master”) distinguishing the covenant name from generic প্রভু. Actual phonetic transliteration (যিহোভা/যাহওয়েহ) is available but not used in mainstream Bengali Bible tradition and would break register continuity with existing Bengali OT texts the audience already reads. |
| אַבָּא-style Aramaic retention pattern (cf. baseline আব্বা) | Not applicable in Joel | No Aramaic loanword occurs in Joel; noted here only to confirm the baseline’s transliteration-retention pattern (as used for আব্বা in Romans 8:15) has no parallel case requiring a decision in this book. |
| שׁוֹפָר (shofar) | Established Bengali Bible term, not raw transliteration: শিঙা | শিঙা (horn) is the long-settled Bengali Bible rendering; a phonetic transliteration (শোফার) is unnecessary and would sound foreign against otherwise natural prose. |
| Proper names: David-adjacent entities are absent from Joel, but יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, צִיּוֹן, מִצְרַיִם, אֱדוֹם | Established Bengali Bible transliterated forms: যিরূশালেম, সিয়োন, মিসর, ইদোম | Use the settled Bengali Bible proper-name forms exactly, matching Bengali OT convention rather than inventing new transliterations. |
| עֵמֶק יְהוֹשָׁפָט / עֵמֶק הֶחָרוּץ (Valley of Jehoshaphat / Valley of Decision) | Transliterate + footnote paraphrase of the wordplay | The Hebrew names encode “YHWH judges” and “decision,” a pun invisible in straight transliteration (যিহোশাফটের উপত্যকা / সিদ্ধান্তের উপত্যকা). Transliterate the proper name for geographic/textual fidelity, but attach a translator footnote explaining the semantic wordplay so the doctrinal point (this valley IS the courtroom of judgment) is not silently lost. |
| Four Hebrew locust terms (אַרְבֶּה, יֶלֶק, חָסִיל, גָּזָם) | Paraphrase (generic term + qualifiers), not transliteration | Transliterating four unfamiliar Hebrew entomological terms into Bengali would produce four opaque loanwords conveying no meaning to the reader at all; a generic term with descriptive qualifiers preserves at least the escalation rhetoric, which transliteration would not. |
| חֶסֶד (chesed) | Compound paraphrase, not transliteration | Already a recurring OT technical term likely to reappear across future curricula (Ruth, Hosea, Psalms); a compound gloss (দয়া (নিয়মের বিশ্বস্ত প্রেম)) preserves meaning for a first-time OT audience better than an opaque transliteration (হেসেদ) would, which carries zero prior recognition in Bengali Christian usage. |
| ”Great and awesome day” formula | Paraphrase, fixed as formula | মহৎ ও ভয়ংকর is a normal Bengali paraphrase of the Hebrew adjective pair; no transliteration option is sensible here since these are common adjectives, not a proper name or technical term. |
| দর্শন / ঢেলে দেব | Paraphrase using existing Bengali vocabulary, with mandatory disambiguating notes (not transliteration, and not avoidance of the loaded word) | Both terms are the best semantically accurate options despite their Hindu-devotional collision risk; inventing a new coinage or transliterating the Hebrew (חֶזְיוֹן, שָׁפַךְ) would produce unintelligible prose. The chosen strategy is targeted translator notes rather than lexical avoidance. |
4. Ranked List of Joel’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal weight × collision probability with Hindu-majority or Muslim-majority devotional/ritual vocabulary already documented in the baseline), specific to this book beyond what the baseline Romans package already resolves.
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সদাপ্রভুর নামে ডাকা vs. সদাপ্রভু আহ্বান করেন within the single verse Joel 2:32. Two Hebrew calling-directions (human→God; God→human) occur back-to-back in one verse that is also the most theologically consequential verse in the book (quoted in Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13). Collapsing both into one Bengali verb erases a real textual distinction and risks producing an internally inconsistent Bengali sentence that reads as circular (“those who call are those God calls,” losing the asymmetry). Highest risk in the whole book because it combines lexical ambiguity with maximal doctrinal and cross-curriculum stakes.
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ঢেলে দেব (pour out the Spirit) read through a puja-libation frame. Directionality reversal (God pouring onto people, vs. the vivid cultural default of a devotee pouring an offering onto an idol) is subtle and easy for a reader — or even an unflagged translator — to miss, especially since the verb family is otherwise perfectly ordinary Bengali. This is the core passage’s central image; a misread here corrupts the theological center of the entire curriculum.
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সদাপ্রভু vs. generic প্রভু for YHWH throughout the book. Because the baseline Romans package trained translators to reach for প্রভু as the default “Lord” term, there is a live risk of habitual carryover into this OT curriculum, silently flattening the covenant-name-specific সদাপ্রভুর দিন into a generic, less doctrinally loaded phrase. Given that “the Day of the LORD” is the book’s organizing theme, this ambiguity is structurally central, not marginal.
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দর্শন for prophetic vision (2:28). Very high cultural salience: দর্শন is not a rare or archaic word but a live, everyday devotional term (temple darshan, guru darshan) that a Hindu-background reader will recognize instantly and may import wholesale into their reading of this verse, precisely at the point where the passage is asserting a universalized, Spirit-given (not devotee-initiated) form of revelation.
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পঙ্গপাল as divine-agency instrument vs. natural disaster. Because Bengali’s word for locust carries no built-in agency marker, and Bengal itself has its own historical memory of famine and agricultural catastrophe (independent of any specific religious framing), there is a real risk that Joel 1’s plague reads to a Bengali audience as an ordinary, tragic ecological event rather than as the deliberate, four-stage judgment of “সদাপ্রভুর সৈন্যদল” (the LORD’s army, 2:11) that the Hebrew explicitly asserts.
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গভীর অনুরাগ / উদ্যোগী হলেন for divine jealousy (2:18), guarding against drift toward ঈর্ষা. The paraphrase strategy is sound, but because ঈর্ষা is the single most obvious, most reflexively available Bengali word for “jealousy,” there is meaningful risk of a translator or reviewer unconsciously reverting to it in later drafts or parallel study materials, re-introducing the sinful-envy connotation into God’s character description.
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আমার কাছে ফিরে আসো (return/repentance, 2:12) drifting toward তওবা-style or প্রায়শ্চিত্ত-style framing in surrounding study-guide prose (not the verse text itself). The verse rendering is well-fenced, but explanatory/pastoral material built around Joel’s repentance call (sermon notes, study questions) is at higher risk of unconsciously reaching for familiar transactional repentance vocabulary from the wider Bengali religious environment, especially when writers are not deliberately trained on this fence.
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যিহোশাফটের উপত্যকা / সিদ্ধান্তের উপত্যকা wordplay loss (3:2, 12, 14). Lower doctrinal centrality than items above, but a real risk that the reader treats these as two unrelated obscure place names rather than recognizing them as the same courtroom-of-judgment image Joel is building toward in chapter 3, undermining the chapter’s climactic force if the footnote is omitted in Phase 2 production.
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নিয়মের বিশ্বস্ত প্রেম (chesed) collapsing into ordinary দয়া in casual reading (2:13). The compound gloss is correct but longer and more easily abbreviated by a time-pressed translator or oral teacher back down to bare দয়া, especially in spoken paraphrase or footnoted cross-references, which would flatten God’s self-revealed covenant character into generic benevolence.
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পরজাতি vs. জাতিগণ in Joel 3’s judgment-on-nations register. Lowest risk on this list because both options are already legitimate Bengali renderings and the doctrinal content (nations under judgment) survives either choice; the risk is purely one of register-mismatch inconsistency across Joel 3’s several occurrences if left to ad hoc per-verse decisions without a native-speaker pass at the end of Phase 2.
5. Summary of Required Phase 2 Enforcement Additions
Beyond the baseline’s forbidden-substitution list, Phase 2 validation for this curriculum must additionally check:
- সদাপ্রভু is never replaced by প্রভু or ভগবান/আল্লাহ (already-forbidden baseline terms) anywhere YHWH is the referent.
- সদাপ্রভুর দিন is rendered identically at every occurrence (1:15; 2:1, 2, 11, 31; 3:14) and never abbreviated to বিচারের দিন.
- ঢেলে দেব is never replaced by অর্ঘ্য ঢালা or সেচন করা.
- ফিরে আসা is never replaced by তওবা or প্রায়শ্চিত্ত.
- উপবাস পবিত্ররূপে ঘোষণা কর is never replaced by রোজা or ব্রত.
- গভীর অনুরাগ / উদ্যোগী হলেন is never replaced by ঈর্ষা.
- 2:32’s two calling-verbs (ডাকা vs. আহ্বান করা) are checked for correct directional assignment every time this verse is touched in any document.
- Joel 2:32’s full clause (যে কেউ সদাপ্রভুর নামে ডাকবে, সে পরিত্রাণ পাবে) is checked for verbatim consistency against any parallel rendering of Romans 10:13 produced under the baseline package.
These additions should be merged into this curriculum’s own AI translation requirements document (Step 12 equivalent) alongside the baseline’s existing rules, not treated as a replacement for them.