Core Glossary
Core Glossary
This curriculum’s glossary covers 47 terms drawn from Romans 1-16, each recorded in full in translation_memory.json with its approved Burmese rendering, transliteration, doctrine link, risk tier, and rejected alternatives.
Highest-priority terms for translator onboarding
Before translating any Romans segment, translators should be drilled on the eight Critical-risk terms first, since these carry the highest cost of error and the most tempting false-friend alternatives:
| Term | Approved | Never use |
|---|---|---|
| Salvation | ကယ်တင်ခြင်း | နိဗ္ဗာန်ရောက်ခြင်း |
| Resurrection | ထမြောက်ခြင်း | ပဋိသန္ဓေတည်ခြင်း |
| Incarnation | လူ့ဇာတိခံယူခြင်း | ဘုရားလောင်းအဖြစ်မွေးဖွားခြင်း |
| Grace | ကျေးဇူးတော် | ကုသိုလ် |
| Messiah | မေရှိယ | မိတ္တေယျ |
| Holy Spirit | သန့်ရှင်းသောဝိညာဉ်တော် | ဝိညာဉ် (alone) |
| Father (of God) | အဖ | ဗြဟ္မာ |
| God | ဘုရားသခင် | ဘုရား (alone) |
Glossary structure
The full glossary is bucketed by risk tier in the published bundle (glossary/risk-groups/), Critical first, so reviewers can prioritize their attention. Each entry records the doctrine it supports, so a reviewer flagged on a doctrine (e.g. Resurrection of Christ) can immediately see every term tied to that doctrine (raised, resurrection, from the dead).
Maintenance note
Any new term encountered during Phase 2 translation that is not yet in this glossary must be added to translation_memory.json before the segment is finalized, following the same fields and risk-assessment process documented in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
Critical Risk Terms
Father
Approved rendering: အဖ
Transliteration: a-pha
Doctrine: Adoption into God’s Family
Rejected alternatives: ဗြဟ္မာ
CRITICAL: Never substitute ဗြဟ္မာ (Brahma, a high but impersonal deity-realm in Buddhist cosmology). God as personal, relational Father must be distinguished from an impersonal cosmic order governed by karma.
God
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: ဘုရား, နတ်သခင်
CRITICAL: ဘုရား alone (phaya) is the everyday word for a Buddha image, a pagoda, or the Buddha himself, and နတ်သခင် evokes the ranked nat-spirit pantheon. ဘုရားသခင်, the established Christian compound since Judson, must always be used in full and taught as naming the one personal Creator, not a Buddha-image or spirit-lord.
Grace
Approved rendering: ကျေးဇူးတော်
Transliteration: kyayzu-taw
Doctrine: Grace
Rejected alternatives: ကုသိုလ်, ကံကောင်းခြင်း, ဝါသနာတော်
CRITICAL: Never use ကုသိုလ် (kutho, accumulated Buddhist merit) or ကံကောင်းခြင်း (good karma/luck). ကျေးဇူးတော် must be explained as favor given apart from merit-making, directly against the daily practice of merit accumulation.
Holy Spirit
Approved rendering: သန့်ရှင်းသောဝိညာဉ်တော်
Transliteration: thangyinthaw weinnyin-taw
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: နတ်ဝိညာဉ်, ဝိညာဉ်
CRITICAL: Never use ဝိညာဉ် alone or နတ်ဝိညာဉ် (a spirit/ghost, or a nat-spirit). Theravada doctrine (anatta) denies any permanent self or spirit-entity at all, so this term requires explicit teaching that the Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity, a permanent divine person, not an impermanent consciousness-stream or a nat.
Imputed Righteousness
Approved rendering: ဖြောင့်မတ်ခြင်းအဖြစ် မှတ်တော်မူခြင်း
Transliteration: pyaungmat-chin a-phyit hmat-taw-mu-chin
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: ကုသိုလ်စုဆောင်းခြင်း
Righteousness credited by God, not earned. ကုသိုလ်စုဆောင်းခြင်း (accumulating merit) is explicitly rejected as the opposite doctrinal direction.
Incarnation
Approved rendering: လူ့ဇာတိခံယူခြင်း
Transliteration: lu-zarti khan-yu-chin
Doctrine: Incarnation
Rejected alternatives: ဘုရားလောင်းအဖြစ်မွေးဖွားခြင်း, နတ်ဆင်းသက်ခြင်း
CRITICAL: NEVER use ဘုရားလောင်းအဖြစ်မွေးဖွားခြင်း (being born as a Buddha-to-be across the Jataka cycle of prior lives) or နတ်ဆင်းသက်ခြင်း (a nat spirit descending/possessing a person). လူ့ဇာတိခံယူခြင်း = the eternal Son permanently taking a single human nature, once, not one stage in a chain of lives.
Jesus
Approved rendering: ယေရှု
Transliteration: Yayshu
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: ရှင်ယေရှု
Standard Myanmar Bible form since the Judson translation. Keep consistent across all documents.
Justification
Approved rendering: ဖြောင့်မတ်ရာသို့ ရောက်ခြင်း
Transliteration: pyaungmat-ya-tho-yauk-chin
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: ကုသိုလ်ရခြင်း, အပြစ်ပြေခြင်း
Compound phrase required; no single Burmese word carries the forensic sense. Never render as ‘gaining merit’ (ကုသိုလ်ရခြင်း).
Messiah
Approved rendering: မေရှိယ
Transliteration: Mei-shi-ya
Doctrine: Messianic Promise
Rejected alternatives: အရေးတော်ပုံလာမည့်သူ, မိတ္တေယျ
CRITICAL: Never use မိတ္တေယျ (Metteyya, the future Buddha of Theravada expectation). The transliterated မေရှိယ preserves the unique, exclusively fulfilled OT promise.
Resurrection
Approved rendering: ထမြောက်ခြင်း
Transliteration: hta-myauk-chin
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ
Rejected alternatives: ပဋိသန္ဓေတည်ခြင်း, ပြန်လည်မွေးဖွားခြင်း
CRITICAL: NEVER use ပဋိသန္ဓေတည်ခြင်း or ပြန်လည်မွေးဖွားခြင်း (rebirth into a new existence within the cycle of samsara). ထမြောက်ခြင်း = the same body raised bodily, once for all, not a new incarnation in the wheel of rebirth.
Righteousness
Approved rendering: ဖြောင့်မတ်ခြင်း
Transliteration: pyaungmat-chin
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: ကုသိုလ်ကံ, သီလ
CRITICAL: Never use ကုသိုလ်ကံ (merit-karma) or သီလ (moral precepts kept for merit). ဖြောင့်မတ်ခြင်း = right standing before God received by faith, not a moral score accumulated through practice.
Salvation
Approved rendering: ကယ်တင်ခြင်း
Transliteration: kaetin-chin
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: နိဗ္ဗာန်ရောက်ခြင်း, လွတ်မြောက်ခြင်း
CRITICAL: NEVER use နိဗ္ဗာန်ရောက်ခြင်း (attaining nirvana/neikban, the Buddhist extinguishing of craving and escape from samsara). ကယ်တင်ခြင်း = deliverance BY God THROUGH Christ, a rescue by another, not a state self-attained through discipline.
Son Of God
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်၏သားတော်
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin i tharadaw
Doctrine: Sonship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: ဗြဟ္မာ့သား, နတ်သား
CRITICAL: Full phrase required. Never render with နတ်သား (son of a nat spirit) or ဗြဟ္မာ့သား (son of a Brahma deity, from the Buddhist cosmology’s Brahma realms). Conveys eternal, unique Sonship, not a lesser celestial being.
High Risk Terms
Abba
Approved rendering: အဗ္ဘ
Transliteration: Abba
Doctrine: Adoption into God’s Family
Aramaic term of intimacy preserved in Romans 8:15. Retain the transliteration alongside အဖ to convey filial closeness the formal term alone may not carry.
Called
Approved rendering: ခေါ်တော်မူသော
Transliteration: khaw-taw-mu-thaw
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Rejected alternatives: ဖိတ်ခေါ်ခြင်း
Context-sensitive: in 1:1 = called to apostleship; in 1:7 = called to be saints; in 8:28-30 = effectual calling to salvation. Distinguish from a mere invitation (ဖိတ်ခေါ်ခြင်း) which can be declined without consequence.
Calling
Approved rendering: ခေါ်တော်မူခြင်း
Transliteration: khaw-taw-mu-chin
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Rejected alternatives: ကံဇာတာ
Never conflate with ကံဇာတာ (astrologically fixed fate/destiny), a common Burmese folk-religious frame for a person’s life path.
Covenant
Approved rendering: ပဋိညာဉ်
Transliteration: padi-nyin
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: သဘောတူညီချက်
A relational, binding bond initiated by God; more than a negotiated agreement (သဘောတူညီချက်).
Election
Approved rendering: ရွေးကောက်ခြင်း
Transliteration: ywaykauk-chin
Doctrine: Effectual Calling
Rejected alternatives: ကံဇာတာ, ကံကြမ္မာ
God’s sovereign personal choice, not ကံဇာတာ/ကံကြမ္မာ (karma-fixed destiny determined by accumulated past-life actions).
Glory
Approved rendering: ဘုန်းတော်
Transliteration: phon-taw
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: ဘုန်းကံ
ဘုန်း alone is ambiguous in everyday Burmese, doubling as the accumulated merit-power that elevates a monk’s or king’s standing (ဘုန်းကံ). ဘုန်းတော် here must be taught as God’s own inherent radiant honor, never merit-power he has earned.
Gospel
Approved rendering: သတင်းကောင်း
Transliteration: thadin kaung
Doctrine: Gospel
Rejected alternatives: ဓမ္မသတင်း, ကောင်းသောအကြောင်းအရာ
Established Myanmar Bible term meaning ‘good news’. Must be qualified as the unique announcement of salvation through Christ, not any generic positive report.
Holy
Approved rendering: သန့်ရှင်းသော
Transliteration: thangyin-thaw
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: စင်ကြယ်သော
Set apart for God and morally pure. စင်ကြယ်သော leans toward ritual/ceremonial cleanliness; keep သန့်ရှင်းသော consistent throughout.
Law
Approved rendering: ပညတ်တရား
Transliteration: pyinnat tayar
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: ဝိနည်း
Mosaic Law. ဝိနည်း specifically names the Buddhist monastic disciplinary code (Vinaya); ပညတ်တရား is the established Bible term and must be kept distinct.
Lord
Approved rendering: သခင်
Transliteration: thakhin
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: ဘုရင်, ဆရာသခင်
In Romans 10:9 the confession ‘Jesus is Lord’ = ယေရှုသည် သခင်ဖြစ်တော်မူ၏. Must convey exclusive supreme authority, not a merely respected teacher (ဆရာသခင်) or earthly king (ဘုရင်).
Obedience Of Faith
Approved rendering: ယုံကြည်ခြင်း၏နာခံမှု
Transliteration: yunkyichin i nakhan-hmu
Doctrine: Obedience of Faith
Rejected alternatives: သီလလိုက်နာခြင်း
Romans 1:5 and 16:26. Obedience that flows out of faith, not precept-keeping (သီလလိုက်နာခြင်း) performed to build merit.
Power Of God
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်၏တန်ခိုးတော်
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin i tankhoe-taw
Doctrine: Power of God for Salvation
Rejected alternatives: အနုဘော်တန်ခိုး
God’s own personal power to save. အနုဘော်တန်ခိုး carries connotations of a relic’s or amulet’s supernatural potency in Burmese folk-Buddhist practice.
Providence
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်၏ကြည့်ရှုစောင့်ရှောက်မှု
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin i kyi-shu-saung-shauk-hmu
Doctrine: Providence
Rejected alternatives: ကံ
God’s personal, purposive governance of events; never ကံ (impersonal karmic law of cause and effect).
Sanctification
Approved rendering: သန့်ရှင်းခြင်း
Transliteration: thangyin-chin
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: ရေချိုးသန့်စင်ခြင်း
The Spirit’s ongoing work of making believers holy, distinct from ritual bathing/purification practices at pagodas.
Seed Of David
Approved rendering: ဒါဝိဒ်၏အနွယ်ဝင်
Transliteration: Dawid i anwe-win
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Romans 1:3; conveys physical lineage and fulfillment of the Davidic covenant promise.
Sin
Approved rendering: အပြစ်
Transliteration: a-pyit
Doctrine: Universal Human Accountability
Rejected alternatives: အကုသိုလ်
Moral transgression against a personal God, not merely အကုသိုလ် (demerit, the negative counterpart of merit that lowers one’s karmic account and next-rebirth prospects).
Medium Risk Terms
Adoption
Approved rendering: သားအဖြစ်လက်ခံခြင်း
Transliteration: thar-a-phyit let-khan-chin
Doctrine: Adoption into God’s Family
Rejected alternatives: ဝမ်းစုတင်ခြင်း
Full legal son-status with inheritance rights. Burmese customary adoption is well understood culturally, so the biggest task is stressing complete (not partial or probationary) sonship.
Apostle
Approved rendering: တမန်တော်
Transliteration: tamantaw
Doctrine: Apostleship
Rejected alternatives: ဆရာတော်, ဆရာကြီး
ဆရာတော်/ဆရာကြီး carry senior-monk connotations. တမန်တော် (sent one with delegated authority) is the established Christian term.
Church
Approved rendering: အသင်းတော်
Transliteration: athin-taw
Doctrine: Church as God’s People
Rejected alternatives: ဘုရားကျောင်း, ဘုရားရိပ်သာ
The gathered people of God. Never use ဘုရားကျောင်း/ဘုရားရိပ်သာ (pagoda/monastic compound), which name Buddhist sacred sites, not a congregation.
David
Approved rendering: ဒါဝိဒ်
Transliteration: Dawid
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Established Myanmar Bible proper-name form.
Faith
Approved rendering: ယုံကြည်ခြင်း
Transliteration: yun-kyi-chin
Doctrine: Faith
Rejected alternatives: သဒ္ဓါတရား
Object of faith must always be specified as Christ, not left generic. သဒ္ဓါ (saddha) is the Buddhist cognate meaning confidence in the Triple Gem after direct verification; biblical faith is trust in a person’s finished work, so the two must be distinguished in teaching notes.
Gentiles
Approved rendering: တစ်ပါးအမျိုးသား
Transliteration: tabar-amyothar
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Rejected alternatives: လူမျိုးခြား
Non-Jews; established term. လူမျိုးခြား (foreigner) is too narrowly ethnic/political for the theological category.
Intercession
Approved rendering: အသနားခံခြင်း
Transliteration: a-thanar-khan-chin
Doctrine: Prayer and Intercession
Rejected alternatives: နတ်ကိုးကွယ်ခြင်း
Prayer on behalf of others addressed to God directly, not petitioning through the 37 nats (guardian spirits) as in Burmese folk practice.
Israel
Approved rendering: ဣသရေလ
Transliteration: Israen
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Proper name; established Myanmar Bible form.
Kingdom Of God
Approved rendering: ဘုရားသခင်၏နိုင်ငံတော်
Transliteration: Phayarthakhin i nainggan-taw
Doctrine: Kingdom Mission
Rejected alternatives: ဘုန်းတော်နိုင်ငံ
God’s sovereign reign; distinguish from an earthly, political nainggan (nation-state).
Mission
Approved rendering: သာသနာပြုလုပ်ငန်း
Transliteration: thathana-pyu lokngan
Doctrine: Mission to the Nations
သာသနာ specifically names the Buddha’s own dispensation/religious institution (Sasana) in ordinary Burmese usage. The compound is retained because it is the term Myanmar Christians themselves already use for missionary work, but every occurrence should carry a translator note clarifying that Christian သာသနာပြု is proclamation of the gospel, not propagation of a Sasana-style religious institution.
Peace
Approved rendering: ငြိမ်သက်ခြင်း
Transliteration: nyein-thet-chin
Doctrine: Peace with God
Rejected alternatives: ကိလေသာငြိမ်းခြင်း
In Romans 5:1, relational peace with God through justification, not the meditative stilling of mental defilements (ကိလေသာ) pursued through vipassana practice.
Saints
Approved rendering: သန့်ရှင်းသူများ
Transliteration: thangyin thu myar
Doctrine: Sainthood
Rejected alternatives: ရဟန္တာ, ရှင်ရဟန်း
ရဟန္တာ (arahant) denotes a spiritually elite monk who has personally attained enlightenment. သန့်ရှင်းသူများ must be taught as every believer set apart in Christ, not an ascetic elite.
Spiritual Gifts
Approved rendering: ဝိညာဉ်ဆုကျေးဇူး
Transliteration: weinnyin su kyayzu
Doctrine: Spiritual Gifts
Rejected alternatives: တန်ခိုးဗလ
Spirit-given enablements for service. Avoid တန်ခိုးဗလ alone, which suggests occult or magical power sought for personal advantage.
Low Risk Terms
Exhort
Approved rendering: တိုက်တွန်းနှိုးဆော်ခြင်း
Transliteration: taik-tun hnoso-chin
Doctrine: Mutual Edification
Context-sensitive: use တောင်းပန်ခြင်း for entreaty and တိုက်တွန်းနှိုးဆော်ခြင်း for building up in encouragement.
Fellowship
Approved rendering: မိတ်သဟာယ
Transliteration: meikthahaya
Doctrine: Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: သူငယ်ချင်းဖွဲ့ခြင်း
Shared participation in Christ, deeper than the social bond conveyed by ordinary friendship vocabulary.
Prophecy
Approved rendering: ပရောဖက်ပြုချက်
Transliteration: parawpeq-pyu-chet
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: ဗေဒင်စာတမ်း
God-inspired declaration, distinct from astrological forecasting (ဗေဒင်).
Prophet
Approved rendering: ပရောဖက်
Transliteration: parawpeq
Doctrine: Inspiration of Scripture
Rejected alternatives: ဗေဒင်ဆရာ
God’s spokesperson; do not confuse with ဗေဒင်ဆရာ (astrologer/fortune-teller), a common and respected figure in Burmese folk practice.
Thanksgiving
Approved rendering: ကျေးဇူးတင်ခြင်း
Transliteration: kyayzu-tin-chin
Doctrine: Thanksgiving
Standard term; no significant doctrinal risk.
Referenced passages