Executive Summary

Why it matters

Romans is the theological backbone of the New Testament, and the Czech Republic presents a risk profile found in no other Language Package in this batch: it is consistently measured as one of the most secular, non-religious societies in Europe, so the dominant translation risk is not a rival religious framework or doctrinal ambiguity between Christian traditions, but low baseline biblical literacy. Many established Czech theological terms are linguistically well-formed but function, for a typical reader, as either archaic literary words with no live conceptual content or as ordinary secular vocabulary (a job, a contract, a court case) with an entirely different everyday meaning.

Key findings

• The registry tracks 40 doctrines across Romans 1-16; 19 require mandatory human theologian review before any translated segment ships (6 Critical, 13 High) — the lowest Critical count of any Language Package in this batch, because most doctrinal content here is not actively contested by a rival framework, just unfamiliar.
• Salvation (spasení) and Justification (ospravedlnění) are Critical for opposite-but-related reasons: spasení has become an archaic word with no live meaning for most readers, while ospravedlnění is a live, ordinary word meaning “excusing an action,” carrying essentially the wrong weight rather than no weight.
• Several key terms (Pán/Lord, povolání/calling, smlouva/covenant, vyvolení/election) have been worn into ordinary secular vocabulary (Mister, job, contract, competitive selection) in ways structurally similar to Greek’s semantic bleaching, but without Greek’s compensating direct access to the NT’s own language or the Septuagint.
• Unlike every other Language Package in this batch, Sainthood and Intercession carry no live syncretism risk from a competing saint-veneration or Marian-devotion culture; the entire risk is that the concepts are unfamiliar, not that they will be misapplied to a rival framework.

Risks

• Comprehension-failure risk: the single greatest risk category for this Language Package. Words like “spasení” (salvation) risk landing as beautiful but empty archaisms, communicating nothing to an unprepared reader rather than communicating something wrong.
• Secular semantic drift risk: words like “povolání” (calling/job), “smlouva” (covenant/contract), and “vyvolení” (election/being selected) carry dominant everyday secular meanings that will be a typical reader’s only association.
• Register-mismatch risk: overly archaic Kralice-tradition phrasing risks sounding like a museum piece to a modern secular reader, while overly clinical modern phrasing risks sounding cold and academic; this Language Package must find a middle register that neither alienates nor undersells.

Opportunities

• Because there is no rival religious or doctrinal framework actively distorting these terms, this Language Package can present Romans’ teaching as genuinely new information without first needing to dismantle an incorrect prior framework, a real advantage relative to every other Language Package in this batch.
• Bible kralická remains a respected literary monument in Czech culture even among secular readers (similar to the King James Version’s residual cultural respect in English), giving this curriculum useful, dignified vocabulary to draw from even where the underlying religious content must be taught from scratch.

Recommended actions

• Route every Critical and High risk segment (19 of 40 doctrines) through human theologian review before publication, with particular attention to salvation, justification, and lordship of Christ.
• Require a plain-language conceptual gloss alongside every Critical/High term on first substantive use in each document, not just doctrinally accurate translation — the review checklist for this Language Package should treat missing conceptual scaffolding as a defect equivalent to a mistranslation.
• Reuse this Language Package’s translation_memory.json for every Romans lesson in Czech rather than re-deriving terms per document, per the two-phase pipeline design.