Linguistic Gap Analysis — Nehemiah (English → French)

Purpose

This document performs the PRD Phase 1 Step 8 linguistic gap analysis for the Nehemiah curriculum in French. It builds on the whole-book semantic survey and core glossary (chapters 1–13, anchored theologically in Nehemiah 8:1-12) and on the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json, which remain the language authority. Its purpose is to:

1. Map each of the six curriculum doctrines against the French vocabulary actually available, naming specific weaknesses and a recommended handling strategy.
2. Distinguish missing vocabulary (no adequate French lexical item exists) from crowded semantic neighborhoods (a French term exists but is already occupied by a competing Catholic, secular, folkloric, or baseline-NT sense) that require deliberate “fencing” — glosses, capitalization conventions, or qualifying phrases that keep senses apart.
3. Resolve transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions for Hebrew/Aramaic-origin terms and idioms.
4. Rank this book’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 review prioritization.

Nothing in this document contradicts the baseline Romans package. Where Nehemiah vocabulary touches a baseline-fixed term (Dieu, saint, alliance, loi, péché, prophète, action de grâce, exhorter, Israël, David), the baseline rendering is reused exactly, per analysis/08_core_glossary.md.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the six curriculum doctrines: the French terms available, their specific weaknesses in French, and the recommended translation strategy.

1.1 Prayer and Dependence on God in Leadership

Available French terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
prière (tephillah)	French Catholic devotional culture strongly associates “prière” with fixed liturgical forms (chapelet, neuvaines, prières récitées) rather than spontaneous, situational address to God.	Retain “prière”; supply teaching notes at first major occurrences (1:4-11; 2:4; 4:9; 6:9) emphasizing spontaneity and immediacy — prayer as Nehemiah’s first recourse, not a scheduled devotional act.
le jeûne (tsom)	Low risk; shared Catholic Lenten / Protestant vocabulary. Secular readers may find fasting culturally remote.	Retain “le jeûne”; brief context gloss at 1:4 for a largely non-fasting secular audience.
la crainte de Dieu (yir’at Elohim)	Secular French “crainte” leans toward dread/fear-of-punishment, not reverential awe.	Retain “la crainte de Dieu” but gloss at 5:15 as reverential awe motivating ethical integrity, explicitly not anxiety.
la bonne main de mon Dieu (yad Elohai ha-tovah)	No natural French idiom for this; literal calque risks sounding merely poetic/decorative rather than a providence-claim.	Render literally as fixed idiom “la bonne main de mon Dieu,” reinforced by teaching note tying it to baseline’s “providence” entry (personal, purposive divine governance, not deist abstraction).
le Dieu du ciel (Elohei hashamayim)	Risk of a deist “God up there” reading if divorced from the covenant-name (le SEIGNEUR) used in the same prayers.	Always pair the title with the covenant name within a lesson’s first occurrence; never let “le Dieu du ciel” stand as Nehemiah’s only divine title in a teaching unit.
le gouverneur (Tirshata/pechah)	Not a weakness in the term itself, but France’s strict laïque (secular) separation of religious and civic authority makes Nehemiah’s fusion of prayerful dependence with active civil office culturally counter-intuitive.	Retain “le gouverneur”; use teaching material (not the translation) to surface the doctrine — governance exercised in continuous dependence on God, not two separated spheres.

Doctrine-level gap: French has no single word bundling “prayer as governing reflex.” The doctrine must be carried by consistent narrative pairing of prière with concrete leadership action (2:4-5; 4:9), not by any one lexical item.

1.2 Rebuilding the Wall as Restoration of God’s People

Available French terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
rebâtir / reconstruire (banah)	Defaults to a purely secular civil-engineering reading (urban reconstruction, disaster rebuilding) in ordinary French.	Retain “rebâtir”; teaching material must foreground the restoration-of-covenant-people frame explicitly, not assume the theological sense is self-evident.
muraille / rempart (chomah)	“Muraille” alone reads as inert architecture; French readers will not automatically hear covenant-identity boundary.	Retain “muraille” as base term; reserve “rempart” for contexts emphasizing protective/defensive nuance (helpful bridge to 8:10’s ma’oz).
l’œuvre vs. le chantier/le travail (ha-melakhah)	French does not have a single term that inherently signals “God’s commissioned task” versus ordinary labor; both senses use everyday words.	Fence deliberately: reserve “l’œuvre” for the theologically loaded shorthand (God’s work), “le chantier” for neutral logistical references — an editorial discipline the Hebrew maintains by repetition that French must maintain by consistent lexical choice.
répara / fortifia (chazaq, hiphil)	French cannot reproduce the Hebrew root-link between “repaired” (ch. 3) and “strength” (8:10, ma’oz) — two unrelated French word families.	Accept the lost wordplay in translation; recover it only in teaching notes explicitly cross-referencing ch. 3 and 8:10.
la ville sainte (ir ha-qodesh)	Risk of implying a quasi-magical sanctity of soil/stone rather than covenantal set-apartness tied to God’s presence and worship.	Retain “la ville sainte”; gloss at first occurrence (11:1) tying holiness to God’s presence and worship, not location itself.

Doctrine-level gap: no missing vocabulary; the risk is entirely one of flattening — French renders the physical wall competently but drops the restoration theology unless teaching material actively restores it.

1.3 The Word of God Read, Understood, and Obeyed

Available French terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
le livre de la Loi de Moïse (sefer torat Mosheh)	None inherent; risk is inconsistency if lessons paraphrase the phrase differently across the curriculum.	Lock the exact phrase “le livre de la Loi de Moïse,” capitalized, across every lesson touching 8:1 — parallel to the baseline’s Romans 1:16-17 consistency rule.
comprendre (bin)	Can register as purely intellectual/informational grasp in French, losing the Hebrew’s fuller sense of comprehension that necessarily produces transformed response.	Retain “comprendre” as the single consistent verb family across vv. 2,3,7,8,9,12; reinforce with surrounding narrative (weeping, obedience, joy) rather than switching to synonyms like “saisir” or “percevoir.”
lire à haute voix (qara)	Bare “lire” alone risks an administrative/silent-reading connotation absent from the text’s public, proclamatory character.	Always pair with “à haute voix.”
clairement / en donnaient le sens (meforash / som sekhel)	No single French term captures “read-plus-explained” as one lexical unit; risk of translators improvising varied phrasing lesson to lesson.	Lock “clairement” + “en donnaient le sens” as the fixed pairing for 8:8, flagged for cross-lesson consistency.
qu’on leur avait fait connaître (hodi’u)	Risk of needless lexical drift from “comprendre” if a translator reaches for a synonym like “révéler” or “informer.”	Lock this exact phrase for 8:12 to preserve the read→explained→known→joy arc as one continuous chain in French, mirroring the Hebrew’s repetition.
comme il est écrit (kakathuv)	Low risk; well-attested biblical-citation formula in French.	Retain; flag as the passage’s hinge from understanding to obedience (8:15) in teaching notes.
assemblée (qahal)	See §2 (crowded neighborhood: never “l’Église”).	See below.

Doctrine-level gap: French vocabulary for this doctrine is adequate but fragmented — no single word carries “read-understood-obeyed” as a unit the way Hebrew’s root-repetition does. The fix is procedural (locking a fixed chain of French phrases) rather than lexical.

1.4 Confession and Covenant Renewal

Available French terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
la confession (hitwaddah)	See ranked risk #1 below. Overwhelmingly defaults to the Catholic sacrament of Penance in ordinary French.	Mandatory teaching-note gloss at every occurrence; never leave unglossed for a general audience.
alliance (berith)	Baseline reuse; no new weakness, but ch. 9-10’s covenant-renewal ceremony is this curriculum’s fullest development and needs full explanatory support (ratification, sealing, oath) that Romans did not require.	Retain baseline term; supplement with sceller / serment / malédiction vocabulary below.
amour fidèle / fidélité (chesed)	See ranked risk below. Risk of collapse into baseline’s “grâce” (distinct NT forensic category).	Never use “grâce” for chesed; use “amour fidèle,” reinforced by teaching note distinguishing ongoing covenant loyalty from unmerited legal-status gift.
sceller (chatam)	Low risk; concrete, legally binding.	Retain; avoid softening to “s’engager” which loses the formal ratification sense.
serment / malédiction (shevuah / alah)	“Malédiction” carries folk-magical (evil-spell) connotations in casual French.	Frame explicitly as Deuteronomic covenant-sanction language in teaching notes at first use (10:29).
se rebeller / la rébellion (marah/meri)	Risk of collapsing into baseline’s generic “péché” and losing the specifically covenant-defiance nuance ch. 9’s historical recital foregrounds.	Use distinctly from “péché” wherever the Hebrew text uses meri/marah rather than chatta’ah.
juste (tsaddiq)	Secular French “juste” primarily denotes legal-procedural fairness/correctness.	Extend baseline’s “righteousness” caution; gloss 9:8, 33 as God’s righteous moral character vindicated even in judgment, not cold legal technicality.
le sabbat (shabbat)	See ranked risk below. French folk-occult collision (“le sabbat des sorcières”).	Mandatory clarifying gloss at first use.
la dîme (ma’aser)	Politically loaded historical association with the abolished pre-1789 feudal ecclesiastical tax.	Clarifying note distinguishing voluntary covenant-support practice from the historical tax.

Doctrine-level gap: this is the single most vocabulary-dense doctrine in the book and carries this curriculum’s highest collision risk (la confession) — see ranked list.

1.5 The Joy of the Lord as Strength

Available French terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
la joie du SEIGNEUR (simchat YHWH)	See ranked risk below. French “joie” easily reads as pleasant feeling/emotional high (“joie de vivre”), losing the fortified, God-given, defensive character the Hebrew intends.	Fixed phrase “la joie du SEIGNEUR” (capitalized per YHWH convention); reinforce with the “force” gloss below at every occurrence (8:10, 12); treat as thesis-level, parallel-priority phrase to Romans 1:16-17.
force (ma’oz)	Bare “force” is generic (physical/moral strength) and entirely loses the fortress/stronghold/refuge nuance of ma’oz.	Render “force” but attach a standing teaching gloss (“un rempart, une forteresse”) at every occurrence connecting this joy to the doctrine of perseverance under opposition.
affligé (atsav)	No collision; low risk.	Retain “affligé”; preserve the pastoral point that this grief must not eclipse restored joy.
se lamenter / pleurer (aval/bakah)	No collision.	Retain; note the redirection (not suppression) of this grief toward joy.
faites silence / calmez-vous (hassu)	No collision; risk only of under-noticing the active pastoral-leadership dimension.	Retain; teaching note should highlight leaders actively shaping congregational emotional response.
la fête des Huttes / des Tentes (Chag ha-Sukkot)	Secular French readers may hear “cabanes/huttes” as a casual camping/leisure association.	Gloss on first use (8:13-18) as commemorating the wilderness wandering, an act of obedience “found written” in the Law.

Doctrine-level gap: the core-passage thesis phrase (8:10) has no single-word French equivalent that carries both “joy” and “fortified strength” at once — this is a genuine missing-vocabulary gap requiring a compound teaching gloss rather than a lexical fix, and it is the doctrine most vulnerable to flattening in ordinary reading.

1.6 Opposition and Perseverance in God’s Work

Available French terms	Weakness	Recommended strategy
se moquer / mépriser (la’ag/bazah)	No collision.	Retain; frame as spiritual opposition to God’s purposes (2:19), not mere interpersonal friction.
conspirer / comploter (qashar)	No collision.	Retain.
intimider / effrayer (yare, hiphil)	Same Hebrew root as yir’at Elohim (reverent fear) but opposite object/effect; French has no lexical device to preserve this root-play.	Accept the lost wordplay; note the contrast explicitly in teaching material (ch. 5 reverence vs. ch. 6 intimidation).
l’épée / monter la garde (cherev/shamar)	No collision.	Retain; models prayer-plus-responsible-action pairing (doctrines P + O together).
se séparer (badal, niphal)	See ranked risk below. Collides with the contemporary French “communautarisme” debate under laïcité.	Frame strictly as Mosaic-covenant fidelity within a specific historical circumstance; theologian review required.
étranger(s) (nekhar/erev)	See ranked risk below. Must never be equated with baseline’s “païens” (distinct NT doctrinal frame).	Reserve “étranger(s)” exclusively for this OT covenant-boundary sense; theologian review for any side-by-side Nehemiah/Romans teaching.

Doctrine-level gap: no missing vocabulary; the risk is entirely one of unintended contemporary political resonance (communautarisme) and unintended cross-book doctrinal conflation (Nehemiah 13 vs. Romans’ Jew-Gentile unity), both requiring fencing rather than new terms.

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Missing Vocabulary (no adequate French lexical item; requires paraphrase/compound gloss)

Concept	Gap	Resolution
simchat YHWH + ma’oz as a unity (8:10)	No French word bundles “joy” and “fortress-strength” as the Hebrew does.	Compound rendering: “la joie du SEIGNEUR” + standing gloss “un rempart/une forteresse” attached at every occurrence, not a one-time footnote.
yad Elohai ha-tovah (the “good hand of God” idiom)	No equivalent French providence-idiom exists (French has no comparable “hand” idiom for favorable circumstance).	Literal calque “la bonne main de mon Dieu,” always reinforced by explicit teaching gloss (parallels baseline’s “providence” entry).
meforash / som sekhel (8:8, “clearly…gave the sense”)	No single French verb or noun captures “read-plus-authoritative-exposition” as one unit.	Fixed two-part rendering “clairement” + “en donnaient le sens,” locked across lessons.
chazaq’s root-link between “repair” (ch. 3) and “strength” (8:10)	French lexicon has no shared root spanning construction-repair and personal/spiritual strength.	Accept the loss in translation; recover only via explicit cross-reference in teaching notes.
yare’s root-link between reverent “fear” of God (ch. 5) and hostile “intimidation” (ch. 6)	Same issue: no shared French root.	Same resolution: explicit contrastive teaching note, not a lexical fix.
hitwaddah’s reflexive/hitpael intensity (“confess repeatedly/thoroughly, of oneself”)	French “confesser” is a simple transitive verb; the Hebrew’s self-involving intensive form has no morphological French counterpart.	Compensate rhetorically (“confesser ouvertement,” “reconnaître pleinement”) in exposition, while keeping “la confession” as the locked glossary term for consistency.

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (French term exists but is already occupied; requires fencing)

French term	Competing occupant(s) of the semantic space	Fencing strategy
la confession	Catholic sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation (“aller à confesse,” le confessionnal, priestly absolution)	Mandatory teaching note at every occurrence: direct, unmediated, corporate address to God, no human mediator, no sacramental absolution. Human theologian review required at every occurrence (parallel to baseline’s “justification”).
le sabbat	(a) “le sabbat des sorcières” — French folk-occult witches’ sabbath; (b) Saturday-vs-Sunday observance-history confusion between Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant traditions	Mandatory clarifying gloss at first use: “le sabbat, jour de repos hebdomadaire prescrit par la Loi de Moïse,” explicitly dissociated from the occult folk sense and from later Christian Sunday observance.
se séparer / étranger	Contemporary French “communautarisme” discourse (perceived ethnic/religious self-segregation, viewed negatively under laïcité)	Frame strictly as a Mosaic-covenant-specific historical measure; explicit disclaimer against any contemporary ethnic-exclusion reading; theologian review required.
étranger (nekhar)	Baseline’s “païens” (NT Gentiles-doctrine referent, Romans)	Never substitute one for the other; theologian review for any curriculum material placing Nehemiah 13 and Romans side by side, to avoid implying either doctrinal contradiction or unchanged continuity across covenants.
amour fidèle / fidélité (chesed)	Baseline’s “grâce” (NT forensic, unmerited-favor category, Critical in baseline)	Never render chesed as “grâce”; chesed is ongoing covenant loyalty demonstrated in relationship, not a declared legal-status gift apart from merit.
assemblée (qahal)	Baseline’s “l’Église” (reserved exclusively for the NT body-of-Christ referent, High in baseline)	Never render qahal as “l’Église”; the LXX’s ekklēsia-for-qahal is background only, not license to collapse OT congregation and NT church.
le SEIGNEUR (YHWH)	Baseline’s plain-case “Seigneur” (kyrios, NT Christological confession-title, Critical)	Typographic distinction is mandatory: small capitals “le SEIGNEUR” for YHWH throughout Nehemiah; never let the OT covenant name and NT Lordship title visually or doctrinally merge before the text itself makes that identification.
la dîme (ma’aser)	Pre-1789 French feudal ecclesiastical tax (historical/political association)	Clarifying note at first use distinguishing the voluntary covenant-support practice from the abolished feudal tax.
la dédicace (chanukkah, Neh. 12)	(a) Casual “séance de dédicaces” (book/album signing); (b) unrelated later Jewish festival of Hanukkah (Maccabean era)	Note both at first use: this is consecration to God’s service, not a signing event, and shares only a root with the later festival not referenced in Nehemiah.
la joie du SEIGNEUR / force	Everyday “joie de vivre” (circumstantial happiness); bare “force” (generic physical/moral strength)	Standing fortress/rempart gloss at every occurrence, per §1.5.
ce jour est saint (extension of “holy” to a day)	Ordinary/secular sense of a day being merely “special” or a public holiday (“jour férié”)	Gloss explicitly as covenant set-apartness in relationship to God, echoed later by Sabbath-holiness language (chs. 9-10, 13), not a generic festive day.
s’incliner / se prosterner (qadad/shachah)	French Catholic devotional prostration/genuflection before the Eucharist, images of Christ, or saints’ relics	Teaching note: this posture in Nehemiah 8:6 is directed to YHWH alone, with no created intermediary.
le gouverneur	No competing occupant, but French laïcité assumptions about strict church-state separation	Teaching note surfaces the coexistence of civil office and spiritual dependence as a positive leadership model, not a category error.

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Amen	Transliterate: “Amen”	Identical, stable across French Catholic and Protestant liturgical usage; parallel to baseline’s Alléluia/Abba standard.
YHWH	Paraphrase via convention, not transliterate: “le SEIGNEUR” (small caps)	French Bible tradition (TOB, Bible de Jérusalem, NBS) does not transliterate the Tetragrammaton; small-caps “SEIGNEUR” is the established ecumenical convention and is required here to stay typographically distinct from baseline’s Christological “Seigneur.” “L’Éternel” (Segond) is recorded only as a noted variant, not the curriculum’s primary choice.
Chag ha-Sukkot (Feast of Booths)	Paraphrase: “la fête des Huttes”	No transliteration precedent in French Bible tradition for this festival name; both “Huttes” and “Tentes” are attested — “Huttes” chosen for consistency, with gloss against the casual camping association.
Tirshata / pechah (governor titles)	Paraphrase: “le gouverneur” for both	Transliterating the Persian loanword “Tirshata” would add an opaque technical term with no teaching benefit; the office, not the exotic title, carries the doctrinal weight (dependence-in-leadership).
chesed	Paraphrase: “amour fidèle” (not transliterated, not glossed as “hesed”)	Unlike Abba (intimacy-marked, already an established French transliteration convention), chesed has no comparable precedent of being left untranslated in French Bible tradition; a paraphrase that avoids collision with “grâce” is preferable to introducing an unfamiliar Hebrew loanword mid-curriculum.
Sukkot-root / Hanukkah-root note (chanukkah in Neh. 12:27)	Paraphrase only: “la dédicace”; do NOT transliterate as “Hanoukka”	Transliterating would actively import the later, unrelated Jewish festival (Maccabean era) into a text that does not reference it; paraphrase avoids the false link while a teaching footnote may name the shared root for interested readers.
Tsom, Shabbat as concepts	Paraphrase with established French Bible words: “le jeûne,” “le sabbat”	Both already exist as stable, glossed French Bible-tradition terms; no transliteration warranted.
Selah / other liturgical interjections	N/A — not present in Nehemiah	Noted for completeness; no decision required for this book.

General rule applied: transliterate only where (a) French Bible tradition already has an established transliteration convention (Amen, Abba-class terms) and (b) the term’s untranslated form itself carries teaching value (intimacy, direct address). Otherwise, paraphrase using existing French Bible vocabulary, fenced with glosses where the semantic neighborhood is crowded.

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4. Ranked List of This Book’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of misreading by the described French readership: practicing/lapsed Catholics, small Reformed/evangelical minority, biblically unchurched secular readers).

1. la confession (hitwaddah) — Critical. Near-certain default to the Catholic sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation for the majority Catholic-heritage readership. No occurrence may pass without a clarifying teaching note and human theologian review. Highest-priority collision in the entire curriculum, structurally parallel to the baseline’s treatment of “justification.”

2. YHWH → le SEIGNEUR vs. baseline “Seigneur” (kyrios) — Critical. Failure to maintain the small-capitals typographic distinction risks readers silently importing a New Testament Christological identity-claim into Old Testament covenant-name usage before the canon itself makes that move. Requires theologian review at every occurrence and strict typesetting discipline through Phase 2.

3. la joie du SEIGNEUR / force (ma’oz) — High. The core passage’s thesis phrase (8:10, 12). Ordinary French “joie” and bare “force” together flatten a fortified, God-given, battle-relevant strength into generic cheerfulness. Because this is the theological anchor of the entire curriculum, any drift here undermines the doctrine of Joy as Strength at its most load-bearing verse.

4. le sabbat — High. The French folk-occult “sabbat des sorcières” association is unrelated in origin but vivid in cultural memory; an unglossed occurrence risks unintentional comic or occult resonance in a solemn covenant-renewal context (chs. 10, 13).

5. se séparer / étranger (badal / nekhar) vs. baseline “païens” — High. Double risk: (a) contemporary French communautarisme/laïcité political resonance; (b) doctrinal conflation with the baseline’s distinct NT Jew-Gentile unity frame if Nehemiah 13 and Romans are ever taught side by side. Requires theologian review and explicit historical-frame disclaimers.

6. amour fidèle (chesed) vs. baseline grâce — High. Both are warm relational-favor words in ordinary French; without explicit distinction, chesed’s covenant-loyalty sense can be silently absorbed into the baseline’s specific, hard-won forensic definition of grace, eroding the Critical-risk precision the baseline established for Romans.

7. assemblée (qahal) vs. baseline l’Église — High. LXX’s ekklēsia-for-qahal is a live temptation to collapse OT congregation and NT church typologically at the translation level rather than the teaching-note level; must remain distinct terms in the French text itself.

8. zakar (“remember,” covenant refrain) vs. baseline justification/grace doctrine — High. Nehemiah’s repeated “Remember me, O my God, for good” (13:14, 22, 29, 31) is a covenant-faithfulness prayer pattern that a curriculum-trained reader fresh from the Romans unit could misread as a merit claim contradicting sola gratia. Requires an explicit distinguishing note at each occurrence.

9. ce jour est saint (holy extended to a day, 8:9-11) — High. The unusual application of qadosh to a day, rather than a person or object, is easy to flatten into “a nice/special day” (jour férié) in ordinary French without the covenantal weight the baseline’s “saint” entry otherwise carries for persons and places.

10. la dîme (ma’aser) — Medium, but noted for completeness. The pre-1789 feudal-tax historical association is strong enough in French cultural memory that even secular, non-devout readers may bring unhelpful connotations; lower doctrinal stakes than items 1-9 but worth a first-use clarifying note in every lesson touching chs. 10 and 13.

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5. Summary for Phase 2 Handoff

• All baseline-fixed terms (Dieu, saint, alliance, loi, péché, Israël, David, prophète, action de grâce, exhorter) carry forward unchanged; no new decision required.
• Twelve terms/phrases are flagged for mandatory human theologian review per analysis/08_core_glossary.md; items 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 above are this book’s most urgent subset of that list.
• No missing-vocabulary gap in this book required inventing a new French coinage; all gaps are resolved by locked compound phrases and standing teaching glosses, never by neologism.
• Every crowded-neighborhood fencing decision in §2.2 must be encoded as a mandatory [TRANSLATOR NOTE] in Phase 2 segment output, per the baseline’s footnote-requirement convention, wherever the flagged term occurs.