01 Executive Summary — 1 Corinthians (English → Burmese)

Why it matters

1 Corinthians is the most doctrinally dense and culturally collision-prone curriculum this pipeline has processed for Burmese to date — more so than the Romans baseline it extends. The letter’s ten assigned doctrines run directly into the destination culture’s dominant religious vocabulary at an unusually high rate: God’s wisdom (ပညာ) shares its exact word with self-attained Buddhist liberating insight; love (မေတ္တာ) shares its exact word with a named Buddhist meditation practice; the resurrection of believers (not only Christ, as in Romans) must now be fenced against rebirth for the first time; and idol meat, the Lord’s Supper, and spiritual gifts each collide with live Burmese ritual practices (nat food-offerings, monk merit-feeding, weizza occult power). Getting Phase 2 translation right here determines whether Myanmar learners receive the gospel Paul actually preached or a syncretized substitute that sounds familiar but teaches something else.

Key findings

• 91 enforced glossary terms now govern this curriculum: 27 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline plus 64 new terms identified across all 16 chapters (assets/translation_memory.json v2).
• Combined Critical + High risk terms: 50 across the full term registry (26 Critical, 24 High) — nearly double the term-level risk density of the Romans baseline package.
• 27 doctrines tracked; 18 require mandatory human theologian review (11 Critical + 7 High), 7 require native speaker review, and 2 are automated-only (assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json).
• The single highest-volume, highest-centrality collision in the entire letter is ἀγάπη/မေတ္တာ (Love as the Greater Way, ch.13, 16:24) — lexically identical to the first Brahmavihāra of Theravada meditation, with no viable alternative Burmese word, requiring mandatory non-skippable teaching notes at every occurrence.
• The Romans baseline’s resurrection fence (ထမြောက်ခြင်း vs. rebirth) previously applied only to Christ; 1 Corinthians 15 is the first curriculum unit extending that same fence to believers’ own future bodies — a doctrinally load-bearing expansion that cannot be assumed “already handled.”
• Full-book coverage confirmed: all 16 chapters reviewed; none silently omitted (analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md, analysis/06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md §7).

Risks

• Critical syncretism risk (5 terms/doctrines): God’s wisdom (σοφία/ပညာ), love (ἀγάπη/မေတ္တာ), demons (δαιμόνιον/နတ်ဆိုး vs. morally ambivalent nats), tongues (γλῶσσα vs. nat-medium trance possession), and the Lord’s Supper (vs. monk merit-feeding/nat food offerings) each risk being absorbed into an existing, superficially similar Burmese religious category rather than being understood on their own terms.
• Cult/sect contamination risk: circulating Burmese-language materials from Latter-day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and prosperity-gospel publishers exploit specific verses (15:29; 15:24-28; 8:5-6; 9:24-25) in ways that directly contradict this curriculum’s Critical-tier doctrines; back-translations matching these patterns must be auto-flagged (analysis/05_translation_landscape.md §4).
• Silent doctrinal drift in oral teaching: several risks (Passover typology, headship/mutuality, singleness-as-merit-superior) are lower at the lexical level but high at the homiletical level — correct base-text translation alone will not prevent misapplication without accompanying teaching notes.

Opportunities

• Genuine cross-cultural bridges exist and should be actively used: Islamic halal/haram law as a structural analog for food-dedication concerns (ch.8); Jewish Passover background for the Lord’s Supper (ch.11); near-universal cross-tradition exaltation of love/compassion as an opening bridge into ch.13’s sharper distinctives; Buddhist sangha-unity concern for schism as an entry point into ch.1’s unity teaching.
• The baseline’s proven mandatory-teaching-note discipline (already applied successfully to “grace” and “mission” in Romans) gives this pipeline a tested mechanism to extend to “wisdom of God” and “love” without needing to invent a new lexical solution.

Recommended actions

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json (v2, 91 terms) and assets/bible_term_registry.json before any Phase 2 segment translation begins; do not proceed on the Romans-only v1 file.
2. Route all 18 theologian-review doctrines and all 50 Critical/High terms through mandatory human theologian review per the escalation rules in analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
3. Treat ἀγάπη/မေတ္တာ, σοφία θεοῦ/ပညာ, δαιμόνιον/နတ်ဆိုး, γλῶσσα/ဘာသာစကားဆု, and ναός/ဗိမာန်တော် as requiring a mandatory teaching note at every occurrence, not only where a non-obvious choice is made.
4. Apply the resurrection-of-believers fence throughout ch.15 with the same rigor as the Christ-resurrection fence, and confirm reviewers do not assume this is “already covered” by the Romans baseline.
5. Cross-check every back-translation of chs.3, 8, 9, 10, and 15 against the cult/sect rendering table in analysis/05_translation_landscape.md §4 before approval.

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This summary is consistent with and does not override assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md, analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md, or any other Phase 1 artifact for this curriculum.