Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Acts 1–28 (English → Burmese)
Purpose and Method
This analysis identifies where the Burmese language (Myanmar script, formal literary register, Judson/Myanmar-Standard-Bible tradition) has, lacks, or dangerously shares vocabulary for the doctrines assigned to the Acts curriculum. It extends — and does not contradict — the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json / doctrine_risk_registry.json. Every term already fixed by the baseline is treated as settled law here; this document’s job is to map the new linguistic terrain Acts introduces, especially around Acts 2:1–41 (Pentecost), and to hand down recommendations that will be formalized in Step 9 (Core Glossary) and beyond.
Full-book coverage is maintained: all nine assigned doctrines are traced across their occurrences from Acts 1 through 28, not only within the core passage.
Assigned doctrines: The Holy Spirit and Pentecost · The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles · Repentance and Baptism · The Church as Community · Apostolic Authority and Miracles · Persecution and Bold Witness · Conversion of Paul · Justification apart from the Law · The Great Commission Fulfilled
Part 1 — Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each doctrine: what Burmese vocabulary already exists (Christian-tradition or general-usage), where that vocabulary is weak or dangerous, and what strategy is recommended.
1.1 The Holy Spirit and Pentecost
| Available Burmese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| သန့်ရှင်းသောဝိညာဉ်တော် (baseline, Critical) | Already fixed; but Acts multiplies the verbs attached to this noun (filled, poured out, fell upon, received) in ways Romans never required. Each verb collocation carries independent syncretism risk. | Reuse baseline noun exactly; treat every new verb-phrase collocation (ပြည့်ဝသော, ကျလာသော, သွန်းလောင်းသော) as its own Section-B term requiring its own risk assessment, not as a free paraphrase of the noun. |
| ဝိညာဉ်ဝင်ခြင်း / နတ်ဝင်ခြင်း (folk-religious: spirit/nat possession of a medium, nat-kadaw) | Structurally the closest lived experience Burmese hearers have for “a spirit comes upon a person and changes their behavior/speech.” Danger: the folk category involves displacement of the medium’s own volition and identity by an external spirit. | Forbidden as a rendering target. Must be actively fenced against (see Part 3) with explicit teaching that the Holy Spirit’s filling empowers the believer’s own faculties (courage, clear speech, worship) rather than displacing them. |
| ပင်တေကုတ္တေနေ့ (transliteration, proposed) | No native lexical item exists for a fixed, calendar-anchored, salvation-historical pilgrim feast at all; Burmese festival vocabulary (ပွဲတော်, ပုံပွဲ) is either Buddhist-merit-festival-coded or generic. | Transliterate and gloss with the OT background (Lev 23:15-21) rather than searching for a “dynamic equivalent” Burmese festival term, which would misleadingly localize a fixed one-time redemptive-historical event into an annual recurring observance. |
| အခြားဘာသာစကားများ (proposed, for γλῶσσαι ἑτέραι) | Burmese has vocabulary for “language” (ဘာသာစကား) with no ambiguity risk in itself; the danger is not the noun but hearer assumption about what kind of speech is meant, given the cultural prominence of nat-kadaw trance utterance and Buddhist mantric/Pali chanting that is not understood by the speaker. | Paraphrase plainly as “other [human] languages,” reinforced by an explicit translator note anchored to the text’s own internal proof (v.6,8,11 — hearers understood their own native tongue). Do not use any term suggesting glossolalic ecstasy divorced from intelligibility. |
| ဘုန်းတော် / တန်ခိုးတော် (baseline, High) | Both already exist and are usable for the wind/fire/power imagery of Acts 2:2-3,19, but risk conflating Pentecost’s power with amulet/relic potency (အနုဘော်တန်ခိုး) if unqualified. | Reuse baseline exactly; always anchor to God/the Spirit as personal source, never to the phenomenon (wind, fire, tongues) as if it were itself the source of power. |
Gap verdict: Missing vocabulary (no native feast-concept) and a crowded, dangerous semantic neighborhood (spirit-possession vocabulary) coincide in this single doctrine — the highest-density risk cluster in the whole curriculum.
1.2 The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles
| Available Burmese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| သတင်းကောင်း, တစ်ပါးအမျိုးသား, ဣသရေလ (baseline) | Fixed and adequate at word level; the doctrinal gap is structural, not lexical — Burmese religious culture has no strong analogue to “one people group specially covenanted, now opened to all,” because Buddhist universalism operates on individual karmic merit rather than corporate covenant history. | Reuse baseline terms exactly; supply doctrine-level (not word-level) explanatory scaffolding in teaching notes rather than trying to coin a new term for “covenant particularism opening to universalism.” |
| ဘုရားသခင်သည် မျက်နှာသာမပေး (proposed, “God shows no partiality”) | No single Burmese idiom captures impartiality without also sounding like a legal/bureaucratic cliché (မျက်နှာသာမပေး is used of judges and officials). | Retain as proposed; the legal-fairness register is actually useful here, reinforcing the forensic, non-favoritist character of the doctrine — flag as acceptable “borrowed register,” not a weakness. |
| ရုပ်တု (baseline-adjacent, “idols”) | The single most culturally load-bearing collision in this doctrine: ရုပ်တု is the ordinary word for any statue/image, including Buddha images (ဘုရားရုပ်တု being a natural, non-pejorative compound in everyday speech). | See Part 3 fencing notes. Never allow ရုပ်တု to appear unqualified near ဘုရား/ဘုရားသခင် vocabulary without contextual clarity that idols are dead objects contrasted with the living, personal God — not an attack on any specific image class by name. |
| မသိသောဘုရား (“unknown god,” Acts 17:23) | Genuinely double-edged: useful rhetorical bridge, but if mistranslated or taught carelessly could be read as legitimizing nats/Buddhist deities as “the same God, unnamed.” | Retain literal rendering but require a mandatory translator note (already flagged Critical-adjacent in the glossary) clarifying Paul’s immediate correction (17:24-31) is not an endorsement. |
Gap verdict: Vocabulary exists; the gap is doctrinal-conceptual (covenant particularism → universal grace) and one term (idols) sits in an extremely crowded, sensitive semantic neighborhood.
1.3 Repentance and Baptism
| Available Burmese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| နောင်တရခြင်း (proposed for μετάνοια) | Burmese already has emotional-regret vocabulary (ဝန်ခံစိတ်ပူပန်ခြင်း, “guilty anxious confession”) and a Buddhist demerit-acknowledgment practice (confessing faults to reduce အကုသိုလ်). နောင်တ itself is a recognized loanword-adjacent term in Myanmar Christian usage but risks collapsing into mere remorse without the turn-toward-God component. | Adopt နောင်တရခြင်း as the fixed term (already Myanmar Christian usage), but every occurrence in teaching material must pair it with the positive turning (ဘုရားသခင်ဘက်သို့ လှည့်ခြင်း) — not simply sorrow over the past. |
| ဗတ္တိဇံ / ဗတ္တိဇံခံယူသည် (transliteration, established) | Already a loanword in Myanmar Christian usage — low ambiguity for churched audiences, but first-generation Buddhist-background hearers may default to associating it with the merit-generating water-pouring ceremony (ရေသွန်းကုသိုလ်ဝေခြင်း) performed at funerals/almsgiving events, or with ordinary ritual bathing at pagodas. | Retain the transliteration (do not attempt a native-coinage translation, which would invite even greater confusion); require the distinguishing translator note already present in the registry at every occurrence contrasting it with merit-water-pouring. |
| အပြစ်လွတ်ငြိမ်းခြင်း (proposed, “forgiveness of sins”) | Burmese has no single native term for judicial pardon by a personal deity; the nearest cultural frame is again demerit-offsetting through merit transfer (ကုသိုလ်ဝေခြင်း) which is a balancing, not a pardoning, transaction. | Retain the compound as proposed; the doctrine-risk registry’s requirement of contrast-with-merit-ledger teaching is essential and should be flagged at every occurrence, not only the first. |
| ယောဟန်၏ဗတ္တိဇံ vs. သခင်ယေရှု၏နာမတော်ဖြင့် ဗတ္တိဇံ (Acts 19:1-7) | Because both use the same transliterated ဗတ္တိဇံ, the distinction between John’s preparatory rite and Christian Spirit-baptism could be invisible to a Burmese reader unless the surrounding phrase is preserved carefully. | Always retain the full possessive/prepositional phrase distinguishing “John’s baptism” from “baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus” — never abbreviate to bare ဗတ္တိဇံ in this pericope. |
Gap verdict: Core terms exist as established loanwords or coinages, but every one sits adjacent to a Buddhist ritual-practice near-equivalent that performs a structurally different (merit-based, self-effort, balancing) function. This is a fencing problem more than a missing-vocabulary problem.
1.4 The Church as Community
| Available Burmese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| အသင်းတော် (baseline) | Adequate; low risk given prior Romans establishment. | Reuse exactly. |
| ဥစ္စာပစ္စည်းများကို ဝေမျှခြင်း (proposed, “common possessions/sharing”) | Directly adjacent to dana (ဒါန), the single most socially reinforced Buddhist practice of merit-generating giving; Burmese hearers will very naturally read any “giving/sharing” language through a merit lens. | Explicit fencing required (Part 3); teach as Spirit-motivated covenantal love within one body, generating no personal merit-credit. |
| ပေါင်မုန့်ဖဲ့ခြင်း (“breaking of bread”) | Risk of assimilation to ritual almsgiving of food to monks (ဆွမ်းကျွေးခြင်း), a highly visible daily merit practice. | Fence against ဆွမ်းကျွေးခြင်း explicitly; this is shared table fellowship among equals, not an offering upward to a spiritually superior recipient. |
| အသင်းတော်လူကြီးများ / သင်းအုပ်ဆရာ (“elders”/“overseer”) | Risk of conflation with Buddhist monastic seniority (based on years since ordination, a fixed hierarchical ranking system) or with traditional village-elder authority (age-based, not gift/Spirit-based). | Teach as a Spirit-recognized, congregationally affirmed function tied to character and gifting, not seniority by years or age. |
| မိတ်သဟာယ, ကျေးဇူးတင်ခြင်း (baseline, Low) | Low risk; adequate as-is. | Reuse exactly. |
Gap verdict: Vocabulary exists across the board; the entire doctrine sits in a crowded neighborhood adjacent to the dana/merit-giving economy, which is arguably as pervasive in daily Burmese Buddhist life as astrology or nat-veneration. Fencing, not coinage, is the primary task.
1.5 Apostolic Authority and Miracles
| Available Burmese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| နိမိတ်လက္ခဏာများနှင့် အံ့ဖွယ်အမှုများ (proposed, “signs and wonders”) | Direct neighbor to iddhi/abhiññā — the supernatural attainments (levitation, mind-reading, past-life recall) traditionally ascribed to advanced meditators and arahants in Burmese Buddhist teaching, and to weizza (esoteric adept) lore. | Fence explicitly: these are God’s authenticating acts attesting his message/messenger by his own initiative, never self-generated attainments through meditative discipline. |
| ဗျာဒိတ်ရူပါရုံ / ဝိညာဉ်ထူးဆန်းသောအခြင်းအရာ (“vision/trance”) | ἔκστασις especially borders on jhāna (meditative absorption) and nat-mediumship trance states, both culturally prestigious altered states achieved through self-effort. | Fence as content-specific, God-initiated revelation for a redemptive purpose, not a self-induced or self-cultivated state. |
| မှော်အတတ် (“sorcery/magic”) | Adjacent to astrology (ဗေဒင်) and weizza practice, both broadly respected (not stigmatized) in Burmese society, unlike in some Western contexts where “magic” reads as clearly illicit. | Do not assume the term will land as automatically negative to a Burmese hearer; explicit teaching that spiritual power cannot be bought (with money or merit) is required, since the Simon Magus narrative’s point could otherwise be missed. |
| ညစ်ညမ်းသောဝိညာဉ် / နတ်ဆိုး (“evil/unclean spirit”) | The single sharpest collision point in this doctrine: the entire nat cosmology assumes negotiable, appeasable ranked spirits. | See Part 3; highest-priority fencing term alongside “filled with the Holy Spirit.” |
| ကောင်းကင်တမန် (“angel”) | Some risk of conflation with the nat pantheon as “another category of spirit being,” inviting devotional practices (offerings, appeasement) inappropriate to biblical angels. | Teach explicitly as created, subordinate, never-to-be-worshiped servants of God (reinforced narratively by apostles refusing worship at 14:12-15 and by the angel’s own role as messenger, not object of devotion). |
Gap verdict: This doctrine has the single highest concentration of “false-friend” vocabulary in the curriculum — terms that sound like they map onto existing, prestigious Burmese categories (meditative attainment, esoteric power, spirit-appeasement) but function in the opposite theological direction.
1.6 Persecution and Bold Witness
| Available Burmese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| သက်သေ / သက်သေခံခြင်း (“witness”) | Adequate legal-testimony vocabulary; low semantic risk. | Retain; ensure firsthand-eyewitness sense is not diluted to generic “believer.” |
| ရဲရင့်ခြင်း (“boldness”) | Risk is pragmatic, not lexical: conversion from Buddhism carries real family/social cost in Myanmar, so “boldness” language could be (mis)read as license for confrontational or dishonoring speech toward family/elders/monks. | Pair consistently with witness/testimony framing rather than confrontation framing, per the baseline’s own escalation guidance for cultural-sensitivity flags. |
| ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခြင်း (“persecute”) | Adequate; theological weight (Christ identifies with the persecuted, 9:4-5) is not inherent to the word and must be supplied by context. | Ensure teaching notes carry the Christ-identification point explicitly; the term alone will not convey it. |
| သိစိတ် (“conscience”) | Risk of being read as a self-generated ethical monitoring faculty analogous to tracking one’s own karmic ledger, rather than a God-oriented faculty answerable to a personal Judge. | Explicit fencing required (see Part 3). |
Gap verdict: Mostly adequate vocabulary; the main risk is pragmatic/register (avoiding confrontational tone) rather than doctrinal collision, except for “conscience,” which needs deliberate fencing.
1.7 Conversion of Paul
| Available Burmese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| ကောင်းကင်ဗျာဒိတ်ရူပါရုံ (“heavenly vision”) | Shares the trance/mediumship risk noted in 1.5. | Render identically across all three tellings (chs. 9, 22, 26); reinforce God-initiated, once-for-all, content-specific nature. |
| ရွေးကောက်ထားသော တန်ဆာပလာ (“chosen instrument”) | Adjacent to ကံဇာတာ (fixed astrological destiny) if “chosen” is misread as predetermined fate rather than sovereign personal selection for purpose. | Tie explicitly to the baseline’s Election doctrine-risk framing; never let “chosen” collapse into horoscope-style destiny language. |
| သန့်ရှင်း၍ ဖြောင့်မတ်တော်မူသောသူ (“Holy and Righteous One,” Acts 3:14, used in Peter’s sermon which frames the whole early-Acts Christological argument Paul later inherits) | Compounds two already-Critical baseline terms; risk is dilution into generic honorific praise if translated loosely rather than as a fixed title. | Render as a fixed compound title, not as two separate free-standing adjectives. |
| လူသား (“Son of Man,” Stephen’s vision, 7:56, the immediate narrative hinge into Paul’s own persecuting activity and later conversion) | Risk of flattening to “a human being,” losing the Danielic exalted-figure force. | Retain literal rendering with mandatory background note tying it to Daniel 7:13-14, not simply “a man.” |
Gap verdict: Vocabulary is largely inherited from doctrines 1.1 and 1.5; the specific new risk here is title-compounding and destiny-language collision with Paul’s “chosen instrument” designation.
1.8 Justification apart from the Law
| Available Burmese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| ဖြောင့်မတ်ရာသို့ ရောက်ခြင်း, ပညတ်တရား (baseline, Critical/High) | Already fixed by Romans baseline; Acts 13:38-39 restates the doctrine with unusual explicitness outside Romans/Galatians. | Reuse exactly; treat 13:38-39 as a cross-reference anchor requiring the same rigor as Romans 3-4. |
| အရေဖျားလှီးခြင်း (“circumcision”) | No inherent lexical risk (a literal, well-understood physical rite), but the doctrinal stakes (is law-observance required for salvation?) are entirely dependent on surrounding argument, not the word itself. | Ensure the Jerusalem Council’s full verdict (ch. 15) is carried with maximal clarity; the term itself carries no ambiguity but the theological conclusion attached to it must not be softened. |
| ဂျို့ကျင်း (“yoke,” 15:10) | Could be read as demeaning the Law itself (as inherently oppressive) rather than rejecting law-observance specifically as a salvation requirement. | Frame carefully: the burden in view is imposing the law as a condition of salvation, not the law’s original goodness as God’s covenant gift to Israel. |
| ရုပ်တုကိုကပ်လှူသော အစားအစာ, ကာမဂုဏ်တရားကို မတရားကျူးလွန်ခြင်း, dietary items (15:20,29) | Risk of the Jerusalem Council’s minimal requirements being read as a reduced, easier law-code (a “new, smaller Vinaya”) rather than pastoral accommodations for table fellowship distinct from any salvation requirement. | Explicit teaching note distinguishing continuing moral instruction (sexual immorality) from temporary fellowship-preserving accommodations (food items), with neither functioning as a law of justification. |
Gap verdict: Core vocabulary is fully inherited and settled from the Romans baseline; the linguistic task in Acts is narrower — ensuring the Council narrative (ch. 15) doesn’t get misread as law replaced by a smaller law, rather than law replaced by grace.
1.9 The Great Commission Fulfilled
| Available Burmese terms | Weaknesses | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
| သာသနာပြုလုပ်ငန်း (baseline, Medium) | Already flagged in the baseline for its Buddhist-institutional (Sasana) coloring; Acts uses this concept as its entire narrative spine (1:8 → 28:31), multiplying the exposure far beyond Romans’s occasional use. | Reuse baseline term but require the translator note at significantly higher frequency given Acts’s structural reliance on the mission motif; consider supplementing with proclamation-focused paraphrase (ဟောပြောခြင်း, “proclaiming”) in narrative summary lines to reduce over-reliance on the Sasana-adjacent compound. |
| ဘုရားသခင်၏နိုင်ငံတော် (baseline, Medium) | Bookends Acts (1:3,6 and 28:23,31); risk is cumulative rather than single-instance — repeated pairing with political/geographic language throughout the narrative (Rome, Caesar, governors) could tempt a reading of the kingdom as a rival political nainggan. | Reuse baseline term; ensure kingdom language is never paired uncritically with the political vocabulary surrounding it (appeal to Caesar, Roman citizenship) without a clarifying frame. |
| ကောင်းကင်ဘုံသို့ဆောင်ယူခြင်းခံရသည် (“ascension”) | Risk of apotheosis-reading or of being folded into a chain-of-existences pattern (a being moving to a “higher” plane after this life, echoing rebirth-into-a-better-realm categories). | Fence explicitly: the same, unique, historical, incarnate body was visibly taken up once — not a spirit’s release, not an ascent to a Brahma-realm through accumulated merit. |
| ခပ်သိမ်းသောအရာတို့ကို ပြန်လည်ထားရှိခြင်း (“restoration of all things,” 3:20-21) | Direct proximity to the cyclical world-age (ကမ္ဘာ) cosmology of Buddhist thought, where ages arise, decay, and are refounded repeatedly. | Fence as a single, final, linear consummation tied to Christ’s return — not one more turn of a repeating cosmic wheel. |
| ဘုရားသခင်၏နိုင်ငံတော်ကို အပြည့်အဝ ရဲရင့်စွာ၊ အဆီးအတားမရှိ ဟောပြောခြင်း (28:31, book’s closing summary) | The deliberately open, non-resolved ending of Acts could be smoothed over into a tidier, more “complete” closing statement by translators seeking narrative satisfaction. | Preserve the intentional lack of closure; do not add resolution language not present in the source. |
Gap verdict: Vocabulary largely inherited; the linguistic task is managing cumulative exposure (mission/kingdom terms recur across 28 chapters) and fencing against cyclical-cosmology readings of “restoration.”
Part 2 — Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no native Burmese lexical or conceptual anchor)
These concepts have no existing Burmese word or cultural frame at all — the gap is a true lexical vacuum, not a collision:
| Concept | Why no native anchor exists | Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Pentecost / Feast of Weeks | No fixed, calendar-anchored covenant-historical pilgrim feast concept in Burmese religious life; Buddhist festivals are either lunar/merit-cycle or historical-commemorative, not covenant-promise-fulfillment-anchored. | Transliterate (ပင်တေကုတ္တေနေ့) + mandatory OT background note. |
| Covenant (as a category, applied to a specific historical people) | ပဋိညာဉ် exists as a word but the underlying concept of a particular ethnic-historical people bound to a personal God by mutual promise has no Burmese cultural parallel. | Reuse baseline term; supply doctrine-level scaffolding, not new vocabulary. |
| Roman citizenship / appeal to Caesar | Purely a historical-legal institution; genuinely novel information for the audience, not a doctrinal risk. | Transliterate/describe plainly (ရောမနိုင်ငံသား, ကဲသာဘုရင်ထံ အယူခံဝင်ခြင်း); treat as background information, not theological vocabulary. |
| God-fearer (a defined “righteous Gentile, not fully proselytized” social-religious category) | No equivalent intermediate religious-social category exists in Burmese Buddhist-vs-non-Buddhist social structure. | Paraphrase descriptively (ဘုရားသခင်ကို ကြောက်ရွံ့သူ) with explanatory note on the historical category’s function in the narrative. |
| Nazirite vow | A specific, time-bound OT votive practice with no Burmese parallel other than the structurally different Buddhist temporary novitiate ordination (shin-pyu), which must be explicitly distinguished rather than borrowed from. | Transliterate/paraphrase (နာဇရိပဋိညာဉ်) with a note distinguishing it from shin-pyu, since the surface parallel (temporary vow, hair-related ritual) makes silent borrowing tempting but doctrinally wrong. |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (native vocabulary exists but is shared with, or adjacent to, a competing religious concept)
These are the highest-priority fencing targets — vocabulary exists, but every existing candidate word already has a strong, well-known Buddhist or folk-religious sense that will bleed into the biblical meaning unless actively fenced:
| Biblical concept | Competing Burmese neighbor | Shared root/surface similarity | Fencing requirement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holy Spirit filling a person | Nat-possession of a medium (နတ်ဝင်ခြင်း) | Both describe an external spiritual agent’s presence changing a person’s state/speech | Must state explicitly: personal agency and faculties are enhanced, never displaced; the Spirit is one divine Person indwelling, not an external entity possessing |
| Tongues (Acts 2) | Ecstatic/unintelligible trance utterance in mediumship and Pali chanting not understood by the speaker | Both are “unusual speech phenomena accompanying a spiritual experience” | Must state explicitly and repeatedly: these were real, known human languages, understood by hearers (2:6,8,11) |
| Idols (εἴδωλα) | Buddha images/statues (ရုပ်တု ordinary usage) | Identical headword | Must never appear unqualified; always framed as the “dead objects vs. living God” contrast, never as a direct naming of a specific Burmese religious object class |
| Repentance | Buddhist demerit-confession / merit-offsetting practice | Both involve acknowledging wrongdoing to a religious authority/order | Must pair with “turning toward God” (positive relational reorientation), not only sorrow over the past |
| Baptism | Merit water-pouring (ရေသွန်းကုသိုလ်ဝေခြင်း); ritual bathing | Both involve water in a religious ceremony | Must state: once-for-all identification with Christ’s death/resurrection, not a repeatable merit rite |
| Common possessions/sharing, giving | Dana (ဒါန) merit-giving | Both are “giving within a religious community” | Must state: Spirit-motivated love, generates no personal merit-credit, is not a transaction |
| Breaking of bread | Ritual almsgiving to monks (ဆွမ်းကျွေးခြင်း) | Both are “food given in a religious community setting” | Must state: shared fellowship among equals, not upward offering to spiritually superior recipients |
| Signs and wonders / spiritual gifts | Iddhi/abhiññā (meditative supernatural attainments); weizza esoteric power | Both are “supernatural ability displayed by a religious figure” | Must state: God’s authenticating initiative, not self-cultivated attainment through discipline/meditation |
| Sorcery / testing the Spirit with money (Simon Magus) | Astrology (ဗေဒင်), weizza practice — broadly respected, not stigmatized | The English “sorcery” reads negatively by default; Burmese equivalents may not | Must state explicitly that this is condemned, since cultural default valence differs from the source-language default |
| Evil/unclean spirits | The entire nat pantheon (နတ်) | Both are “personal spiritual beings interacting with humans” | Must state: subordinate, hostile, never appeased/negotiated with, always defeated by Christ’s authority — sharply distinguished from the Holy Spirit |
| Vision/trance | Meditative absorption (jhāna); mediumship trance | Both are “altered states in which spiritual content is received” | Must state: God-initiated, content-specific, purpose-driven, not self-induced |
| Conscience | Karmic self-monitoring of one’s own moral ledger | Both are “internal moral awareness” | Must state: answerable to a personal God, not a self-generated tally system |
| The Way (as a name for the Christian movement) | The Noble Eightfold Path (မဂ်ဂင်ရှစ်ပါး) | Both are “a path/way” as a name for a total religious-ethical system | Must state: personal allegiance to and following of a living person received by grace, not a self-powered ethical-meditative discipline |
| Restoration of all things | Cyclical world-age (ကမ္ဘာ) renewal | Both describe “the world being made new/restored” | Must state: a single, final, linear event tied to Christ’s return, not a repeating cosmic cycle |
| Ascension | Apotheosis / merit-attained ascent to a Brahma-realm | Both describe “a being moving upward to a higher spiritual plane” | Must state: the same unique incarnate body taken up bodily and visibly, once, not a spirit’s release or a merit-earned realm-ascent |
| Chosen instrument / election | Fixed astrological destiny (ကံဇာတာ) | Both describe “a person’s life-path being set in advance” | Must state: personal, purposive, sovereign choice by God for a specific redemptive task, not impersonal fate |
Structural observation: Acts, far more than Romans, is a narrative book whose doctrines are carried by episodes (Pentecost, Cornelius, Simon Magus, the Ephesian exorcists, the Jerusalem Council, the Areopagus speech) rather than by discursive argument. This means the fencing burden falls disproportionately on narrative moments where a single word choice inside a story can either preserve or collapse a doctrine — there is less surrounding argumentative scaffolding than in Romans to catch a mistranslation.
Part 3 — Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Pentecost | Transliterate (ပင်တေကုတ္တေနေ့) | No native concept exists to paraphrase into; a paraphrase risks inventing a false-equivalent festival category. Transliteration + explanatory note is safer than either a literal “fiftieth day” calque (opaque) or a dynamic-equivalent “Jewish holy day” (loses covenant-historical specificity). |
| Baptism | Transliterate (ဗတ္တိဇံ) | Already an established loanword in Myanmar Christian usage; any native-coinage attempt (e.g., a compound built on ရေ, “water”) would inevitably echo the water-pouring merit rite. Transliteration is the safer choice specifically because it does NOT map onto an existing word. |
| Messiah | Transliterate (မေရှိယ, per baseline) | Reused from Romans baseline; any paraphrase risks drifting toward မိတ္တေယျ (Metteyya) associations. |
| Jesus, apostle names, place names | Transliterate, per established Myanmar Bible forms | Consistency with baseline and Myanmar Bible Society conventions. |
| Tongues (γλῶσσαι) | Paraphrase (အခြားဘာသာစကားများ, “other languages”) | A transliteration of “glossolalia” would be opaque to the target audience and would not carry the text’s own insistence on intelligibility; plain paraphrase anchored to the text’s internal proof (vv. 6,8,11) is required. |
| The Way (ἡ ὁδός) | Paraphrase (ထိုလမ်းစဉ်တော်, “that [same] way/path”) | Transliteration is impossible for a common noun functioning as a title; paraphrase is necessary but must be fenced hard against the Noble Eightfold Path (Part 2). |
| Filled with the Holy Spirit | Paraphrase (compound of established baseline noun + verb) | No transliteration is possible or desirable; must build strictly from the already-fixed baseline noun (သန့်ရှင်းသောဝိညာဉ်တော်) plus a verb that avoids possession-language. |
| No other name / call upon the name / Holy and Righteous One | Paraphrase, following exact compound structures already fixed in the registry | These are theological formulas, not proper nouns; transliteration is not applicable, and paraphrase must follow the fixed compound exactly for cross-document consistency (2:21; 4:12; 16:31). |
| Sorcery/magic, signs and wonders, vision/trance | Paraphrase, native vocabulary | Native Burmese vocabulary exists and is comprehensible; the task is fencing (Part 2), not filling a lexical gap. |
| Nazirite vow | Transliterate + paraphrase (နာဇရိပဋိညာဉ်, “Nazirite covenant/vow”) | A pure transliteration alone (Naziratay) would be opaque; a pure paraphrase alone risks borrowing shin-pyu vocabulary. The hybrid form retains OT specificity while remaining parseable. |
| Roman citizen, appeal to Caesar, Sanhedrin | Paraphrase/descriptive rendering, background institutional terms | These carry low doctrinal risk; clarity of historical reference matters more than theological precision, so natural descriptive Burmese is preferred over transliteration of Latin/Greek institutional names. |
General principle applied throughout: transliterate when (a) no native concept exists at all, or (b) every available native candidate is more dangerous than an unfamiliar loanword; paraphrase when a native equivalent exists and can be adequately fenced with teaching notes.
Part 4 — Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of collision × frequency of occurrence) specific to the Acts curriculum. This ranking is intended to set theologian-review priority for Phase 2.
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“Filled with the Holy Spirit” vs. nat-possession (နတ်ဝင်ခြင်း). The single highest-risk ambiguity in the entire curriculum. Occurs at the curriculum’s own core passage (Acts 2:4) and recurs at least nine more times across the book. A single mistranslation here could recast the defining experience of the early church as indistinguishable from a spirit-medium’s trance.
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“Other tongues” vs. unintelligible ecstatic/trance speech. Directly adjacent to #1, occurring in the same core passage (2:4,6,8,11). Risk is compounded because the text’s own resolution (intelligibility to hearers) is easy to omit under space constraints in derivative teaching materials.
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“The Way” vs. the Noble Eightfold Path. A title used as the movement’s self-designation across five occurrences (9:2; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22); risks recasting the entire gospel as a self-powered ethical-meditative discipline rather than grace-received allegiance to a living person.
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Evil/unclean spirits vs. the nat pantheon. Occurs at four separate narrative flashpoints (5:16; 8:7; 16:16-18; 19:12-16); risk is not merely conceptual confusion but potential encouragement of inappropriate devotional responses (propitiation) toward beings the text presents as hostile and subordinate.
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Idols (ρυπτου) vs. Buddha images. The single most culturally sensitive term in the curriculum by social consequence, even though the doctrinal content itself is straightforward; mishandling risks either doctrinal softening or needless cultural offense (7:41; 15:20,29; 17:16; 19:26).
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“No other name” / exclusivity of salvation (4:12) vs. multi-refuge devotional culture. The sharpest single exclusivity claim in Acts; low occurrence frequency (essentially one verse) but maximal doctrinal weight and maximal collision potential with a culture accustomed to holding multiple religious refuges simultaneously.
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Signs and wonders / spiritual gifts vs. iddhi/abhiññā and weizza attainment. High frequency (six+ occurrences) and high prestige-collision risk, since these Burmese categories are honored, not stigmatized, attainments — the text’s insistence on divine authentication versus self-cultivation is easy to lose.
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Baptism vs. merit water-pouring/ritual bathing. High frequency (nine+ occurrences) in a book whose narrative arc is substantially organized around baptism scenes; risk is heightened by the term’s status as an established loanword, which can create false confidence that no further fencing is needed.
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Repentance vs. demerit-confession/remorse. High frequency (nine+ occurrences), central to the core passage’s climax (2:38); risk is subtler than #1-4 because the term already exists in Myanmar Christian usage, making the gap easy to overlook in Phase 2 quality review.
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Common possessions/breaking of bread vs. dana/almsgiving. Moderate frequency but extremely high cultural salience, since merit-giving is arguably the most pervasive single religious practice in Burmese lay life; risk is that the church’s radical mutual love reads as simply “more giving,” missing its non-transactional character.
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Restoration of all things / ascension vs. cyclical cosmology and merit-ascent. Lower frequency (a handful of verses) but high doctrinal weight for the Great Commission Fulfilled doctrine’s eschatological horizon; risk of quietly reframing a linear, final consummation as one more turn of the cosmic wheel.
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Chosen instrument/election vs. astrological destiny (ကံဇာတာ). Concentrated in Paul’s conversion narrative; risk is narrower in scope (essentially one doctrinal thread) but could subtly undercut the entire Conversion of Paul doctrine’s emphasis on sovereign personal calling versus impersonal fate.
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Mission/kingdom vocabulary (သာသနာပြု, ဘုရားသခင်၏နိုင်ငံတော်) vs. Sasana-institution and political-nation framing. Lower per-instance severity than items 1-9 but the highest cumulative exposure in the book, since this vocabulary structures the entire 28-chapter narrative arc from 1:8 to 28:31.
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Conscience vs. karmic self-monitoring. Low frequency (two verses) but a subtle, easily-missed risk because the mistranslation would not look obviously wrong to a reviewer unfamiliar with the karmic-ledger frame.
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Jerusalem Council’s minimal requirements (ch. 15) vs. a “smaller law” reading. Concentrated in a single chapter but structurally important for the Justification apart from the Law doctrine; risk is doctrinal (undermining grace-apart-from-law) rather than lexical.
Summary Recommendation for Step 9 (Core Glossary Construction)
- All Section-A (baseline-reused) terms carry forward unchanged; no gap analysis action required beyond frequency/occurrence mapping already noted in Part 1.
- Every Part 2 “crowded neighborhood” term must be entered into the Core Glossary with an explicit fencing note, not merely a translation, and flagged for human theologian review regardless of its numeric risk tier, per the ranked list in Part 4.
- Every Part 2.1 “missing vocabulary” term must be entered with an explicit background/teaching note requirement rather than a fencing note, since the risk there is comprehension failure, not syncretism.
- The transliteration/paraphrase decisions in Part 3 should be treated as binding defaults for Step 9 and should not be revisited ad hoc during Phase 2 segment translation.
- Items ranked 1–9 in Part 4 should receive priority ordering in the Doctrine Risk Registry’s theologian-review queue, ahead of Critical-risk items inherited unchanged from the Romans baseline, since those are already settled while these are newly introduced by Acts.