Executive Summary: Micah Translation Requirements (French)

Why it matters: Micah is the first Old Testament, Hebrew-source book layered onto a French translation infrastructure built and proven on Romans (Greek New Testament). This project confirms the baseline’s terms, tone, and risk-tiering framework extend cleanly to a new testament and genre — but it also surfaces a new class of destination-language collisions specific to France (a Shoah-sensitive rendering ban, a live clergy-abuse discourse, a significant Jewish community, and a UN-slogan-hijacked idiom) that the Romans baseline had no occasion to document. Phase 2 cannot begin safely until these are locked.

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Key findings

• Full-book coverage confirmed. All 7 chapters of Micah were surveyed; every chapter contributes at least one load-bearing term or doctrine — none silently omitted.
• 37 new theological terms introduced by Micah now sit in translation_memory.json alongside 23 inherited Romans-baseline terms reused exactly or fenced by contrast (e.g., lord vs. new lord_yhwh; gentiles/“païens” vs. new nations_goyim; righteousness/“justice” vs. new justice_mishpat).
• One single French word — “justice” — carries two theologically distinct loads across this curriculum family: Romans’ forensic gift-righteousness (δικαιοσύνη) and Micah’s ethical covenant demand (mishpat). This is the highest-ranked ambiguity identified in the linguistic gap analysis and the anchor risk of the core passage, Michée 6:8.
• One forbidden rendering carries severe real-world consequence if missed: “holocauste” for the Hebrew olah (burnt offering, 6:6) — a legacy Segond/Darby-era rendering that now collides with the Shoah in contemporary French and must never appear in this curriculum’s output.
• Five Critical-risk terms and three Critical-risk doctrines require mandatory human theologian review on every single occurrence: the divine name YHWH (lord_yhwh), justice/mishpat, the burnt-offering ban, the Bethlehem Ruler (ruler_bethlehem), and the “goings forth from days of eternity” eternal-pre-existence phrase (Michée 5:2) — the last two feeding directly into the Romans baseline’s own Critical deity_of_christ and sonship_of_christ doctrines.

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Risks

Risk category	Count	Detail
Critical-risk terms (theologian review, every occurrence)	5	lord_yhwh, justice_mishpat, burnt_offering, ruler_bethlehem, goings_forth_eternity
High-risk terms (theologian review)	10	mercy/chesed, firstborn offering, remnant, priests/kohanim, nations/goyim, swords-into-plowshares, covenant lawsuit, pardoning iniquity, covenant faithfulness/emet, idolatry (borderline)
Critical-risk doctrines	3	Justice (Mishpat) as Covenant Obligation; The Coming Ruler from Bethlehem; Deity and Eternal Pre-existence of the Coming Ruler
High-risk doctrines	10	True Worship vs. Empty Ritual; Covenant Lawsuit; Mercy/Chesed Shown to Others; Judgment on Corrupt Leaders; Idolatry as Covenant Betrayal; Remnant Preserved by God; Nations Streaming to Worship the LORD; Eschatological Peace and Disarmament; Hope of Forgiveness and Pardon; God’s Covenant Faithfulness to the Patriarchs
Total terms + doctrines requiring mandatory human theologian oversight	28 (15 terms + 13 doctrines)	Every one of these must route to human theologian review before Phase 2 output is accepted, per doctrine_risk_registry.json and bible_term_registry.json

Standout destination-culture-specific risks: (1) “holocauste” ↔ Shoah collision, (2) “sacrificateurs” vs. “prêtres” against the live CIASE/Sauvé clergy-abuse discourse, (3) “épées en socs de charrue” already owned by secular UN/diplomatic French, (4) the Jewish-Christian interpretive divergence on Michée 5:2’s eternal-origins phrase, requiring careful non-triumphalist handling given France’s significant Jewish community.

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Opportunities

• Micah 4-5’s Zion and Bethlehem imagery has strong, ready-made resonance in French Catholic liturgical memory (Christmas Midnight Mass readings), an asset for teaching that Romans’ epistolary material could not offer.
• Micah 6:8 is one of the most broadly quotable verses across Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and secular French audiences alike — an opportunity to reach lapsed and unchurched readers, provided the “justice/mercy/humility” triad is properly glossed rather than left as generic civic virtue.
• The Romans↔Micah fencing work done here (SEIGNEUR/Seigneur, justice/justice, fidélité/miséricorde) establishes a reusable cross-curriculum collision-management pattern for any future Old Testament book added to this French-language pipeline.

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Recommended actions

1. Lock translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json (Micah-extended) before any Phase 2 segment translation begins — especially the lord_yhwh small-caps convention, which governs ~40 occurrences and cannot be safely retrofitted.
2. Enforce the forbidden-substitution list (holocauste, chef politique, prêtres for kohanim, païens for ch. 4’s nations, l'Éternel/Yahvé for YHWH, compressed eternity phrasing) at automated validation, not review-stage discretion.
3. Route all Michée 5:2 and 6:6-8 segments to human theologian review without exception, per the escalation rules in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
4. Mandate disambiguating clauses wherever “justice,” “miséricorde,” or “reste” appear, especially in any lesson referencing both Romans and Micah in the same session.
5. Carry the France-specific sensitivity notes (Shoah, clergy-abuse discourse, Jewish community, UN slogan) into Phase 2 reviewer training materials, not just this document, since these risks are not visible from the English source text alone.