Semantic Analysis

Several Bengali terms in this Language Package carry a narrower, broader, or differently-loaded semantic range than their English source word, which affects how consistently they can be used across contexts.

Narrower-than-English terms

• পবিত্র লোক (saints): must be used for all believers corporately (Romans 1:7), never for an ascetic elite — the narrower, elevated sense belongs to সাধু, which is explicitly rejected for this use even though older Bengali Bible translations used it.
• আহুত / আহ্বান (called/calling): the same English word “called” covers at least three distinct senses in Romans (called to apostleship in 1:1, called to be saints in 1:7, and effectual calling to salvation in 8:28–30). The Bengali rendering must be checked against which sense is active in each verse.

Broader-than-English terms

• সামর্থ্য (power): used consistently for “power of God” (Romans 1:16) specifically to avoid শক্তি, which carries a much stronger and more specific goddess-power association in Bengali than the equivalent term does in most other Indian languages, given Bengal’s Shakta Hindu heritage.
• বিশ্বাস (faith): covers both “belief” and “trust” in Bengali, an advantage here since Romans uses “faith” to mean active, personal trust in Christ, not mere intellectual assent — বিশ্বাস’s broader range captures both without needing two separate words.

Terms carrying unintended religious-system baggage

• ধর্ম: in Bengali, unusually among this pipeline’s languages, this single word means both Hindu cosmic duty AND “religion” itself in ordinary usage (হিন্দু ধর্ম, ইসলাম ধর্ম, খ্রীষ্টান ধর্ম). Using it for “righteousness” would not just import Hindu dharma-theology but also collapse “being righteous” into “having a religious label,” a double error specific to Bengali’s everyday usage pattern.
• নাজাত vs. পরিত্রাণ: both mean something like “deliverance/salvation” in current Bengali, but নাজাত carries the specific Islamic theological mechanism (submission plus weighed deeds) while পরিত্রাণ carries the specific Christian mechanism (grace through Christ). These are not stylistic variants of the same idea; they are two different soteriologies expressed in superficially similar vocabulary.

Implication

Where a Bengali term’s semantic range differs from its English source, or where it overlaps with a competing religious system’s vocabulary, the glossary’s notes field exists specifically to flag the mismatch, so a term isn’t applied mechanically in a context its actual Bengali meaning doesn’t support.