Linguistic Gap Analysis — 2 Peter (English–Cantonese)

Purpose

This analysis identifies, for the destination language Cantonese (Hong Kong/Macau written Cantonese, Traditional script, Protestant church register), where the existing Romans-baseline vocabulary is sufficient for 2 Peter, where the letter’s distinctive doctrinal content (Scripture’s inspiration, false teachers, the Parousia, the Day of the Lord, divine patience, and — the sharpest new risk — “divine nature”) exposes genuine missing vocabulary, and where established Cantonese religious vocabulary is crowded by competing folk-Taoist, folk-Buddhist, and commercial-culture semantic neighbors that require deliberate fencing. It also records transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions and ranks this letter’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 routing. This document extends, and does not contradict, the baseline translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and 08_core_glossary.md.

2 Peter presents a materially different risk profile than Romans: fewer soteriological set-piece terms (justification, imputation), but a concentrated cluster of Critical-tier collisions with living, actively-practiced Hong Kong folk religion — spirit-medium consultation (問米), spirit-writing (扶乩), temple hell-cosmology (地獄, 十八層地獄, 超度), Taoist internal alchemy (內丹/煉丹/得道成仙), and Buddhist Buddha-nature (佛性) — that have no equivalent concentration in Romans.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the seven curriculum doctrines: available destination-language terms, their weaknesses, and the recommended handling strategy.

1.1 The Reliability and Inspiration of Scripture

Doctrine element	Available Cantonese terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Eyewitness testimony (1:16)	目擊者 (muk6 gik1 ze2)	None significant; but risk of drifting toward an esoteric “initiate who has seen” framing (得道之人) if translators reach for elevated register	Use plain courtroom-register 目擊者; explicitly gloss as legal/historical eyewitness testimony, not mystical vision-attainment
Prophetic word (1:19)	預言嘅話 (jyu6 jin4 ge3 waa2)	預言 alone risks being heard as a fortune-teller’s or almanac’s “prediction”	Retain compound 預言嘅話, never bare 預言 in this specific doctrinal frame; footnote distinguishing from 求籤/睇風水擇日 prediction
Origin of prophecy — not human will (1:21)	人嘅意思 (jan4 ge3 ji3 si1)	Adequate; low collision	Preserve the strong negation structure (“絕唔係出於人嘅意思”)
Carried along by the Holy Spirit (1:21)	被聖靈感動 (bei6 sing3 ling4 gam2 dung6)	CROWDED — see §2.2.1: sits directly beside 扶乩 (spirit-writing) and 問米 (spirit-medium possession), both live Hong Kong Taoist/folk practices in which a deity is believed to seize a person’s hand or voice	Mandatory distinguishing teaching note on every occurrence (see §2.2.1); never paraphrase toward trance/channeling vocabulary
Scripture’s superior certainty vs. myth (1:16)	神話 (san4 waa2) “myth/legend”	Low risk as a word, but the rhetorical contrast Peter draws (invented tale vs. verified history) can be lost in translation if rendered too flatly	Pair with clarifying gloss “捏造嘅故仔” (a fabricated tale) to keep the evidentiary contrast visible

Overall doctrine risk: High. No single term is beyond Cantonese’s expressive reach, but the cluster around 1:19-21 sits adjacent to Hong Kong’s single most commercially visible and religiously plural prediction-and-mediumship culture (temple fortune-sticks 求籤, almanac date-selection 睇黃曆擇日, spirit-writing 扶乩, spirit-medium consultation 問米). This is the letter’s core passage and demands theologian review on every occurrence of every term in this row.

1.2 Growing in Christian Virtue

Doctrine element	Available Cantonese terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Virtue chain (1:5-7): faith→virtue→knowledge→self-control→perseverance→godliness→brotherly affection→love	信心, 美德, 知識, 節制, 忍耐, 敬虔, 弟兄之愛, 愛	Individually low-to-medium risk; the chain structure itself (a step-progression toward maturity) risks being read through the lens of Confucian self-cultivation stage-progression (修身) or Taoist internal-alchemy staged attainment (築基→結丹→…)	Frame the chain as Spirit-enabled growth flowing from grace already given (1:3-4), not a self-powered ladder of attainment; recurring teaching note recommended at 1:5
Godliness (εὐσέβεια)	敬虔	Collides at the edges with Confucian filial piety 孝 and ancestor/temple devotion 敬拜祖先	Define explicitly as God-directed reverence, distinct from filial or ancestral devotion
Divine power enabling virtue (1:3)	神聖嘅大能	Collides with qigong/internal-alchemy “cultivated power” (氣功力量, 內丹修煉嘅力量)	Emphasize granted, not self-cultivated, power
Escape from corruption as prerequisite to virtue (1:4)	逃脫敗壞	Low risk on its own; risk arises only in combination with 神嘅性情 (see §1.7)	Keep sequencing clear: escape and virtue both flow from shared divine nature, granted by grace

Overall doctrine risk: Medium-High. No missing vocabulary; the risk is structural/rhetorical (self-cultivation framing), not lexical.

1.3 False Teachers and Their Judgment

Doctrine element	Available Cantonese terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
False prophet / false teacher	假先知, 假教師	Adequate; risk is under-weighting seriousness toward mere “charlatan” (算命佬) register	Retain 假先知/假教師; explicitly teach these as claiming divine/ecclesial authority, a graver danger than fortune-telling fraud
Heresy (αἵρεσις)	異端	Risk of softening toward modern “a different viewpoint” (唔同意見) in casual usage	Anchor definition to destructive, ruinous doctrine leading to 滅亡, not mere disagreement
Judgment (κρίσις)	審判	CROWDED — see §2.2.2: risk of collapse into 報應 (karmic retribution), an extremely pervasive Cantonese folk concept	Always render as a personal divine tribunal with a fixed future date, never an automatic cosmic ledger
Tartarus/custody of fallen angels (2:4)	落地獄	CROWDED — see §2.2.3: 地獄 evokes the vivid, multi-level Chinese folk-Buddhist/Taoist hell cosmology (十八層地獄, 閻羅王, 盂蘭節 hell-money, 超度 release-rites)	Fence with mandatory note: no tiered karmic structure, no presiding folk-deity judge, no ritual-intervention escape route
Authority/dominion (κυριότης) blasphemed by false teachers (2:10)	主權	Political-sovereignty overtones given Hong Kong’s political climate	Keep strictly doctrinal (angelic rank), per baseline caution on kingdom/authority language

Overall doctrine risk: High. Missing-vocabulary gap is minimal; the dominant challenge is fencing 審判 and 落地獄 against far more culturally salient folk-religious neighbors.

1.4 The Certainty of Christ’s Return

Doctrine element	Available Cantonese terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Parousia / Coming (1:16; 3:4)	降臨	CRITICAL — CROWDED — see §2.2.4: identical surface word used for a deity’s ritual “descent” during folk-Taoist invocation or a spirit-medium séance (神明降臨)	Mandatory distinguishing note on every occurrence: single, personal, bodily, visible, historically final event, not a repeatable ritual manifestation
Scoffers who deny the Parousia (3:3-4)	戲笑者	Risk of reading as honest intellectual skepticism rather than moral rebellion	Frame explicitly as scoffing driven by “their own sinful desires” (3:3), a moral posture, not doubt
Eyewitness confirmation via Transfiguration (1:16-18)	目擊者, 威嚴, 尊榮	See §1.1; low additional risk here	Cross-reference 1.1 handling

Overall doctrine risk: Critical, driven almost entirely by the single term 降臨.

1.5 The Day of the Lord and Final Judgment

Doctrine element	Available Cantonese terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Day of the Lord (3:10, 12)	主嘅日子	CROWDED — see §2.2.5: “day” language collides with almanac auspicious/inauspicious date culture (老黃曆擇日) pervasive in Hong Kong wedding/business/funeral planning	Fence as a single fixed historical day of divine intervention, never a calendrical forecast
Heavenly bodies/elements dissolved (3:10, 12)	天象	Classical Chinese astrological usage (reading heavenly omens for governance/fortune) lingers in this term	Clarify literal physical dissolution of creation, not an omen to be divined
New heavens and new earth (3:13)	新天新地	Risk of assimilation to Buddhist cyclical kalpa (劫) cosmology	Emphasize final, one-time, non-repeating renewal
Judgment on the created order (3:7)	審判	See §1.3	Same fencing as above

Overall doctrine risk: Critical, again concentrated in one term (主嘅日子) plus the surrounding cosmological vocabulary.

1.6 Patience of God’s Timing

Doctrine element	Available Cantonese terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
God’s patience/forbearance (μακροθυμία, 3:9, 15)	寬容	Risk of being heard as a depleting favor-ledger (like a temple deity’s or ancestor’s tolerance that eventually “runs out”), or assimilated to 運程-style fortune-cycle thinking	Frame as purposeful patience aimed at repentance, not a limited reservoir of luck
Repentance (μετάνοια, 3:9)	悔改	MISSING FROM BASELINE TM — no Romans entry exists; risk of collapse into ritual vow-discharge (還神還願) or merit-accumulation (功德)	Propose 悔改 for cross-curriculum TM addition (see §3); fence explicitly against ritual-obligation framing
Human perception of delay (3:8-9, “a day is as a thousand years”)	(no single term; handled by discourse, not glossary)	Risk of being read as a philosophical claim about relative/cyclical time (echoing Buddhist cosmological time-scales, kalpas) rather than an assurance about God’s character	Teaching note: this is about God’s patience, not a metaphysical time theory

Overall doctrine risk: High. One genuine missing-vocabulary item (悔改, needing formal TM registration) plus one crowded neighborhood (寬容).

1.7 Divine Nature and Escaping Corruption

Doctrine element	Available Cantonese terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
Divine nature (θεία φύσις, 1:4)	神嘅性情	THE SINGLE HIGHEST-RISK TERM IN THIS CURRICULUM — see §2.2.6. Sits between two live, popular soteriologies: Taoist self-cultivated immortality (得道成仙, 內丹/煉丹) and Buddhist latent Buddha-nature (佛性)	Never render as bare 神性 (too structurally parallel to 佛性); retain CUV’s 性情; mandatory teaching note on every occurrence (see §2.2.6)
Partaker/sharer (κοινωνός, 1:4)	同享者	Risk of implying independent spiritual attainment if decoupled from “through Christ’s promises”	Always anchor grammatically to the preceding promise-clause
Corruption (φθορά, 1:4; 2:19)	敗壞	Risk of assimilation to Buddhist impermanence (無常), a neutral cosmic-law concept	Frame as morally culpable decay caused by sinful desire, not a neutral metaphysical fact to be transcended
Escape (ἀποφεύγω, 1:4; 2:20)	逃脫	Low risk standing alone	No special handling needed beyond context

Overall doctrine risk: Critical. This is the doctrinal center of gravity for the entire linguistic gap analysis; see ranked list in §4.

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Missing Vocabulary

Unlike Romans, 2 Peter does not introduce large tracts of entirely absent theological vocabulary — Cantonese Christian usage (via CUV cross-reference) already has serviceable terms for nearly every concept. The genuine gaps are narrow and structural:

Gap	Description	Recommendation
悔改 (repentance)	No Romans-baseline TM entry exists for μετάνοια; Romans discusses repentance conceptually but never assigns it a dedicated glossary entry	Register 悔改 (fui3 goi2) formally in shared cross-curriculum translation memory, risk tier High, with the same anti-ritual-discharge fencing as 08_core_glossary.md §B.5
愛 (agapē as virtue-chain term)	No Romans-baseline TM entry for love as a discrete glossary term (Romans uses it compositionally, e.g. in “love of God,” but never isolates it)	Register 愛 (oi3) formally, risk tier Medium, noting Cantonese 愛’s coexisting generic romantic/secular usage requires contextual disambiguation in virtue-chain contexts
A dedicated fenced compound for “carried along by the Holy Spirit”	Standard Chinese Bible tradition (CUV) already supplies 被聖靈感動, but no Hong Kong Protestant curriculum-level teaching note exists distinguishing it from 扶乩/問米 at the register needed for a folk-religion-literate lay audience	Not a lexical gap but a pedagogical gap — the term exists; the distinguishing explanatory apparatus around it does not yet exist and must be authored fresh for this curriculum (see §2.2.1)
A dedicated fenced compound for θεία φύσις distinguishing it from 得道成仙 and 佛性	Same pattern: 神嘅性情 exists in Chinese Bible tradition, but no existing Hong Kong catechetical material addresses the specific three-way collision (grace-given / not self-cultivated / not latent-universal) at once	Author dedicated teaching note (see §2.2.6); this is the highest-priority authoring task flowing from this analysis

Conclusion: 2 Peter’s translation challenge in Cantonese is not primarily a lexical gap (Cantonese has words for all these concepts) but a explanatory/fencing gap — existing words sit close enough to existing, actively-practiced folk-religious concepts that translation without accompanying doctrinal notes will default to a syncretistic reading.

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

Ranked by proximity/frequency-of-collision risk in ordinary Hong Kong religious life, not by doctrinal weight alone (that ranking is in §4).

2.2.1 被聖靈感動 (“carried along by the Holy Spirit,” 1:21) vs. 扶乩 / 問米

• Neighbor practices: 扶乩 (spirit-writing/planchette divination, historically practiced at some Hong Kong temples and still referenced in popular culture) and 問米 (spirit-medium consultation, in which a medium’s voice/hand is believed to be taken over by a summoned spirit) both describe a spirit seizing a human instrument to produce a message — structurally the nearest neighbor concept in Cantonese religious vocabulary to “carried along by.”
• Fence: Every occurrence requires a note that this is sovereign superintendence working through the prophets’ own minds, personalities, and historical circumstances — not trance-channeling, not possession, and not a repeatable technique available to any practitioner today. The canon this produced is closed; 扶乩/問米 claim ongoing, repeatable access.

2.2.2 審判 (“judgment”) vs. 報應 (“karmic retribution”)

• Neighbor concept: 報應 is deeply embedded in everyday Cantonese moral speech (e.g. “有報應嘅” said of a bad outcome), describing an impersonal cause-effect ledger operating automatically across lifetimes.
• Fence: 審判 must be taught as a personal tribunal, presided over by God, with a fixed future date (2:4, 2:9; 3:7) — not an automatic, impersonal cosmic bookkeeping system that could apply regardless of any deity’s involvement.

2.2.3 落地獄 (“cast into Tartarus/hell”) vs. 十八層地獄 / 超度

• Neighbor concept: Chinese folk-Buddhist/Taoist hell cosmology is vivid and commercially visible in Hong Kong (temple murals, Chinese opera, the Hungry Ghost Festival 盂蘭節 with burned hell-money, and 超度 release-rites performed by monks/priests to free a soul from hell).
• Fence: This custody of fallen angels (2 Peter 2:4) has (a) no multi-tiered karmic structure, (b) no presiding folk-deity judge such as Yama King (閻羅王), and (c) crucially no possibility of ritual intervention — no paper offering, rite, or intercession alters the outcome. This last point is the most pastorally urgent, since 超度 is a widely purchased ritual service in Hong Kong even among otherwise secular families.

2.2.4 降臨 (“Parousia/Coming”) vs. 神明降臨 (deity’s ritual descent)

• Neighbor concept: The identical word 降臨 is used in folk-Taoist ritual language for a deity’s temporary descent into a shrine, statue, or medium during invocation — an event that is repeatable, localized, and typically brief.
• Fence: Christ’s Parousia is a single, personal, bodily, visible, historically final event witnessed by all — never a temporary or repeatable manifestation. This is arguably the single most operationally dangerous crowded-neighborhood risk in the letter because 降臨 is the only available standard Chinese Christian rendering (there is no equally established alternative to substitute), meaning the fence must be carried entirely by teaching notes, not by lexical choice.

2.2.5 主嘅日子 (“Day of the Lord”) vs. 睇黃曆擇日 (almanac date-selection)

• Neighbor concept: Hong Kong’s almanac culture treats certain calendar days as auspicious or inauspicious for weddings, funerals, business openings, and moves — a “day” is something to be selected or avoided based on divination.
• Fence: “The Day of the Lord” names a single, fixed, certain, divinely-appointed day of historical intervention — not a forecastable or selectable date on a recurring calendar.

2.2.6 神嘅性情 (“divine nature,” 1:4) vs. 得道成仙 (Taoist self-cultivated immortality) and 佛性 (Buddhist latent Buddha-nature)

• This is the single most consequential crowded neighborhood in the entire curriculum.
• Neighbor concept 1 — 得道成仙 (Taoist internal alchemy, 內丹/煉丹): teaches that a dedicated practitioner can, through disciplined technique (breathing, meditation, alchemical practice), cultivate their way into a divine/immortal nature. This directly threatens a reading of 1:5-7’s virtue chain as the “technique” by which believers self-cultivate their way into divine nature, inverting Peter’s actual grace-then-fruit sequence.
• Neighbor concept 2 — 佛性 (Buddhist Buddha-nature): teaches that all sentient beings already possess a latent, universal Buddha-nature awaiting realization through enlightenment (開悟). This threatens a reading of “partakers of the divine nature” as confirming a pre-existing universal spiritual capacity in every person, rather than a nature granted specifically and only through Christ’s promises to believers.
• Why 性情, not 神性: CUV’s established rendering 性情 (“nature/disposition”) is structurally safer than a bare 神性 would be, because 神性 is grammatically parallel to 佛性 in a way that invites direct visual/conceptual substitution. 性情 breaks that parallel.
• Fence (mandatory on every occurrence): the sharing named in 1:4 is (a) granted by grace through Christ’s specific promises, never attained by self-cultivation technique; (b) not a pre-existing latent nature already present in all humanity awaiting self-realization; (c) inseparable from moral transformation and escape from corruption — never a free-standing metaphysical status achievable apart from union with Christ.

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Θεϊος (theios)/θεία φύσις	Paraphrase (神嘅性情), not transliteration, not bare compound 神性	Transliteration is not applicable to a descriptive Greek phrase; among paraphrase options, the CUV-established 性情 was chosen specifically to avoid the 佛性 collision (see §2.2.6)
δεσπότης (despotēs)	Paraphrase (主宰), distinguished from κύριος (主)	No transliteration tradition exists for this term in Chinese Bible history; paraphrase chosen to preserve the absolute-ownership sense stronger than 主, while explicitly rejecting folk-pantheon “Heavenly Sovereign” paraphrase options (玉皇大帝-style epithets)
παρουσία (parousia)	Paraphrase (降臨), not transliteration	Chinese Christian tradition has never transliterated this term (unlike, e.g., “Amen”/阿們 or “Hallelujah”/哈利路亞); paraphrase is the only viable option, which is precisely why the fencing burden in §2.2.4 falls entirely on teaching notes rather than lexical choice
ἀρετή (aretē) in the virtue chain	Paraphrase (美德), context-sensitive rendering	No transliteration tradition; paraphrase must be flagged as context-sensitive between “God’s own excellence” (1:3) and “a cultivated virtue” (1:5) — the same Cantonese word serves both referents, so segment-level disambiguation notes are required rather than two different target terms, to preserve Peter’s deliberate wordplay linking God’s excellence to the believer’s called-for excellence
ταρταρόω (tartaroō)	Paraphrase (落地獄), not transliteration of “Tartarus”	A transliterated “他耳他魯” would be doctrinally safer (avoiding the 地獄 collision entirely) but is unattested in any Chinese Bible tradition and would be unintelligible to a Hong Kong lay audience; paraphrase with mandatory fencing note (§2.2.3) is judged the better trade-off than an intelligibility-sacrificing transliteration
Ἀββά-style intimacy terms	N/A in 2 Peter (no Abba occurrence in this letter)	Noted for completeness; no decision required here
Proper names (Peter, Simeon, Balaam, Sodom, Gomorrah, Noah, Lot)	Transliteration, established CUV forms	Follow baseline convention (§ Transliteration Standards in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md); no new proper-name decisions required beyond confirming 彼得 (Peter/Simeon Peter), 挪亞 (Noah), 羅得 (Lot), 巴蘭 (Balaam), 所多瑪 (Sodom), 蛾摩拉 (Gomorrah) match established Cantonese Bible forms
μῦθος (mythos)	Paraphrase (神話) with clarifying gloss, not transliteration	神話 is fully naturalized standard Cantonese vocabulary (used for Greek/Chinese mythology generally); transliterating “mythos” would be both unintelligible and unnecessary since no doctrinal collision exists here beyond the evidentiary-contrast concern already addressed by the gloss “捏造嘅故仔”

General principle: 2 Peter, unlike some NT books, offers almost no candidates for new transliteration (no Aramaic intimacy terms, no untranslatable technical cultic vocabulary). Nearly every hard decision in this letter is a paraphrase-vs-paraphrase choice among existing Chinese Bible vocabulary, which means the fencing/teaching-note apparatus carries far more weight here than lexical selection does — a structurally different balance than in Romans, where several Critical terms (e.g. 基督, 阿爸) were resolved by transliteration choice alone.

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4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity of doctrinal consequence and proximity/frequency of the competing folk-religious concept in ordinary Hong Kong life.

1. 神嘅性情 — “divine nature” (1:4). Highest-risk term in the curriculum. Sits between two independently popular, actively practiced soteriologies (Taoist self-cultivated immortality; Buddhist latent Buddha-nature). A mistranslation or an unglossed translation here does not merely confuse — it actively invites readers to map the entire doctrine onto an existing folk-religious framework they already hold. Mitigation: mandatory theologian-reviewed teaching note on every occurrence; never abbreviate to bare 神性.

2. 被聖靈感動 — “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (1:21). This is the letter’s central apologetic claim for Scripture’s reliability (the core passage’s theological climax) and sits immediately beside two live mediumship practices (問米, 扶乩) that Hong Kong readers may have direct personal or family exposure to. Mitigation: mandatory distinguishing note per §2.2.1; flag for theologian review on every occurrence per escalation rules.

3. 降臨 — “Parousia/Coming” (1:16; 3:4). No alternative rendering exists in Chinese Bible tradition, so the entire disambiguation burden rests on accompanying teaching material rather than lexical choice — structurally the hardest to fence item on this list precisely because there is no lexical escape route. Mitigation: every occurrence requires an explicit “once, bodily, final, not ritual” note; flag for theologian review.

4. 落地獄 — “cast into Tartarus” (2:4). Directly adjacent to Hong Kong’s most commercially visible religious ritual economy (盂蘭節 hell-money, 超度 rites purchased by families for deceased relatives, temple hell-murals). The specific pastoral danger is a reader assuming, by folk-religious analogy, that some ritual intervention could alter the fallen angels’ fate. Mitigation: explicit “no ritual-intervention escape route” note; theologian review.

5. 主嘅日子 — “Day of the Lord” (3:10, 3:12). Collides with near-universal Hong Kong almanac date-selection practice (擇日); risk is subtler than #1-4 because the collision is more about category (treating a sacred day as calculable/avoidable) than about direct doctrinal substitution. Mitigation: fence as fixed, certain, non-forecastable; theologian review given Critical tier.

6. 審判 — “judgment” (2:4, 2:9; 3:7). Risk of quiet assimilation into 報應 (karmic retribution) is high precisely because 報應-thinking is so embedded in ordinary Cantonese moral speech that it can slip in without any lexical substitution occurring at all — the word stays 審判 but the concept imported by the reader may still be karmic. Mitigation: explicit personal-tribunal, fixed-date framing in surrounding teaching text, not just the glossary entry.

7. 同享者 / 神嘅性情 combination (1:4, “partakers of the divine nature”). Ranked separately from #1 because the specific risk here is compositional: even with 性情 correctly fenced, pairing it with 同享者 in translation could still read as “you already share a divine essence” if the grammatical anchor to “through these [Christ’s] promises” is lost in a shortened or paraphrased rendering. Mitigation: segment-level rule requiring the promise-clause anchor to remain grammatically attached in translation, not merely implied.

8. 寬容 — “patience of God” (3:9, 3:15). Risk of being heard as a depleting favor-ledger (analogous to a temple deity’s patience running out) rather than purposeful forbearance aimed at repentance. Lower-ranked than the above because the misreading, while real, does not import a competing salvation system the way #1-3 do — it primarily risks flattening God’s character rather than substituting a different doctrine of salvation. Mitigation: native-speaker/theologian note tying patience explicitly to repentance’s purpose (3:9).

9. 虔誠 (敬虔, godliness) and the virtue-chain’s staged structure (1:5-7). Risk is structural rather than lexical: the six-step progression (faith → virtue → knowledge → self-control → perseverance → godliness → brotherly affection → love) can be misread through a Confucian self-cultivation or Taoist staged-attainment lens if not explicitly anchored to grace already given in 1:3-4. Mitigation: teaching note at 1:5 establishing the chain as fruit of grace, not a self-powered ladder.

10. 異端 / 假教師 / 假先知 (heresy, false teacher, false prophet, 2:1). Ranked lowest of the flagged items because the available Cantonese terms are reasonably precise and the collision risk (softening toward “just a different viewpoint,” or toward mere entertainment-fraud “charlatan” register) is a matter of degree rather than category substitution. Mitigation: native-speaker review sufficient in most segments; escalate to theologian only where heresy is directly tied to the destruction/judgment vocabulary of #4 and #6.

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5. Summary and Recommendations for Phase 2

1. Lexical coverage is largely adequate. Cantonese Bible tradition (via CUV cross-reference) already supplies workable renderings for essentially every term 2 Peter requires; only 悔改 and 愛 require formal addition to the shared cross-curriculum translation memory (§2.1).
2. The dominant challenge is explanatory fencing, not word choice. Six terms/phrases (§2.2.1–§2.2.6) sit in semantic neighborhoods crowded by actively-practiced Hong Kong folk-Taoist and folk-Buddhist concepts (問米/扶乩, 報應, 十八層地獄/超度, 神明降臨, 睇黃曆擇日, 得道成仙/佛性). Phase 2 segment translation must carry mandatory teaching/translator notes on every occurrence of these terms, not merely a correct lexical choice.
3. Two terms — 神嘅性情 (1:4) and 被聖靈感動 (1:21) — require the highest level of scrutiny in this curriculum, exceeding even the Critical-tier collision risks documented in the Romans baseline, because both concepts have no comparably close neighbor concept in Romans’ doctrinal content.
4. 降臨 (Parousia) is uniquely difficult because, unlike other Critical terms in this analysis, no alternative Chinese Bible rendering exists to substitute — all risk mitigation must occur through accompanying teaching material.
5. All ten ranked ambiguities in §4, plus every Critical-tier term catalogued in 08_core_glossary.md and bible_term_registry.json, must be routed to human theologian review per the escalation rules already established in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md; this analysis introduces no new review-routing categories, only additional required note content within the existing Critical/High workflow.