Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis — Ruth (English → Hindi)
Purpose
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Book of Ruth. It identifies where Hindi’s existing theological vocabulary — as fixed by the baseline Romans/Galatians Language Package — is sufficient, where it is missing (no adequate term exists and coinage/paraphrase is required), and where it is crowded (multiple biblical concepts compete for the same Hindi word-family and must be fenced apart with disciplined, non-negotiable rules). It closes with a ranked list of Ruth’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 routing.
Ruth is a narrative book, not an epistolary argument. Its doctrinal freight is carried less by isolated technical nouns (as in Romans/Galatians) and more by ordinary-life vocabulary — leaving, returning, gleaning, lodging, redeeming a field — that becomes theologically load-bearing through repetition and plot structure. The gap analysis below reflects that difference: several of Ruth’s highest risks are not “hard doctrinal nouns” but common words whose ordinary Hindi glosses would flatten or distort the theology.
Full-book coverage note: All four chapters of Ruth are analyzed below. No chapter is silently skipped. Chapter-by-chapter term density is uneven (chapter 1 and chapter 4 carry the heaviest doctrinal load; chapter 2 carries the Providence/Hesed convergence; chapter 3 carries the Kinsman-Redeemer legal-symbolic core), and this is noted explicitly rather than assumed.
Part A — Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the six curriculum doctrines: the available Hindi resources (from the baseline TM/registry and general Hindi religious vocabulary), their specific weaknesses for this doctrine, and the recommended strategy.
A1. Hesed (Covenant Loving-kindness)
| Available Hindi term | Normal semantic field | Weakness for Hesed |
|---|---|---|
| अनुग्रह (baseline: grace) | Unmerited divine salvific favor, Critical risk, reserved | Hesed is not primarily about merit-status before God; it is covenant loyalty expressed as action between persons (Naomi↔Ruth, Boaz↔Ruth, God↔all three) — using अनुग्रह here would import a salvation-doctrine register into human-to-human kindness scenes and dilute अनुग्रह’s own Critical reservation elsewhere |
| दया (baseline: mercy) | Compassion toward the miserable/suffering | Captures the compassion component but not the covenant-obligation or steadfastness-beyond-duty components; दया can be shown to a stranger once, hesed presupposes an ongoing bond |
| कृपा (baseline: non-grace kindness, e.g. Rom 11:22) | Situational kindness/favor shown by a superior | Captures the favor component but is typically episodic and asymmetric (patron→dependent); hesed is often symmetric/reciprocal and lifelong (Ruth’s hesed to Naomi is not from a superior to a dependent) |
| प्रेम (general love) | Broad affection | Too broad; loses the covenant-loyalty and legal-obligation dimensions entirely |
Recommended strategy: Retain the coined compound करुणा-प्रेम (established in 08_core_glossary.md / bible_term_registry.json as hesed) as the dedicated doctrinal term, Critical risk, glossed on first use in every document with an explicit three-way fence: not अनुग्रह (salvific, unmerited, vertical only), not दया alone (compassion without covenant obligation), not कृपा alone (episodic, asymmetric favor). Hesed = covenant loyalty + proactive kindness + steadfastness beyond what is strictly owed, flowing both divine→human and human→human, and Ruth’s narrative structure (1:8; 2:20; 3:10) exists precisely to trace this single quality across all three vectors. This is a missing-vocabulary gap, not a crowded one at the level of the coined term — but the coinage sits inside an already-crowded neighborhood (see Part B) and depends on the fence holding.
A2. The Kinsman-Redeemer (go’el)
| Available Hindi term | Normal semantic field | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| छुटकारा (baseline: redemption) | Deliverance secured at a price, High risk, reused from Galatians | Captures the “deliverance at a price” component but not the specific kinship-legal office — छुटकारा alone could describe any redemptive act, generic or divine, with no requirement of blood-kinship or legal eligibility |
| मुक्तिदाता (a plausible but rejected coinage: “liberator”) | Liberation from bondage | FORBIDDEN — carries moksha/samsara-liberation register, exactly the register the baseline forbids for salvation/freedom |
| खरीदार (“buyer”) | Commercial purchaser | Reduces a covenantal, kinship-based, family-preserving legal office to a bare commercial transaction; loses the obligation-of-kin dimension entirely |
| वारिस (baseline: heir) | Legal inheritor | Related but distinct legal role — an heir receives; a go’el acts to redeem/restore on another’s behalf |
Recommended strategy: Retain the coined compound कुटुम्बी छुटकारा देनेवाला (“kinsman who is a redeemer,” established in the prior glossary/registry as kinsman_redeemer_goel), Critical risk, built deliberately on the already-Critical baseline छुटकारा so that Phase 2 translators recognize the redemption-family connection, while the कुटुम्बी element supplies the missing kinship-legal-eligibility component. This is a genuine missing-vocabulary gap: no single existing Hindi term (biblical or general) names this specific ancient Israelite legal office. The verb counterpart छुड़ाना (redeem_verb) must be paired consistently. This term typologically anticipates Christ (cf. baseline redemption note); that typological payload must survive into any NT cross-reference material built on this curriculum.
A3. God’s Providence in Ordinary Life
| Available Hindi term | Normal semantic field | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| परमेश्वर का विधान (baseline: providence) | God’s personal, purposive governance | Sufficient as the doctrinal frame-term, but Ruth’s narrative technique is different from Romans 8:28’s direct theological assertion — Ruth shows providence through the narrator’s ironic use of “chance” vocabulary rather than stating it |
| भाग्य / नियति / किस्मत | Impersonal fate, destiny, karma-adjacent fortune | ALL THREE explicitly FORBIDDEN by the baseline providence, election, and sovereignty entries — yet these are the default, most natural Hindi glosses for “she happened to come” (מִקְרֶה) |
| संयोग (coincidence) | Neutral “coincidence” | Closer to safe than भाग्य/किस्मत but strips out the narrator’s deliberate theological irony; risks reading as pure randomness with no divine hand at all |
Recommended strategy: This is Ruth’s single highest-risk gap precisely because the natural Hindi vocabulary for “it happened / by chance” is also the forbidden vocabulary. No existing single Hindi word safely carries both (a) surface-level ordinariness/apparent coincidence and (b) underlying divine governance simultaneously, the way Hebrew מִקְרֶה does for the narrator. Strategy: periphrastic rendering plus mandatory framing note — ऐसा हुआ कि… (और यह परमेश्वर के विधान से था) rather than any single-word gloss. Never bare संयोग without the parenthetical; never भाग्य/नियति/किस्मत under any circumstance. This is a genuine missing-vocabulary gap requiring a structural (clause-level), not lexical, solution.
A4. The Inclusion of Gentiles in God’s Redemptive Plan
| Available Hindi term | Normal semantic field | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| अन्यजाति (baseline: gentiles) | Non-Jewish peoples, established BSI term | Sufficient and directly reusable; Ruth is the OT narrative case study for the NT doctrine this term already serves in Romans |
| लोग / प्रजा (people) | Covenant community / nation | Sufficient for עַם but risks being heard through an Indian caste/community-transfer lens (see Part B) |
| मोआब / मोआबिन (transliterated ethnonym) | Specific historical enemy-neighbor nation | No inherent weakness as a proper name, but the doctrine depends on the label being retained consistently at every recurrence (six times across the book) rather than smoothed away once Ruth is “accepted” |
Recommended strategy: No missing vocabulary here — अन्यजाति and मोआब/मोआबिन are adequate and already established. The risk is narrative-discipline, not lexical: translators must resist the natural impulse to drop the “Moabite” label once Ruth is sympathetically established in the story, because the narrator’s own deliberate retention of the label through 4:5 and 4:10 is the literary vehicle carrying the Gentile-inclusion doctrine to its resolution in the genealogy. Flag for theologian spot-review of consistency, not term substitution.
A5. Loyalty and Faithfulness
| Available Hindi term | Normal semantic field | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| छोड़ना / त्याग देना (leave/forsake) | Abandonment | Serviceable; त्याग देना carries stronger covenantal resonance than छोड़ना and should be preferred at 1:16’s climactic refusal |
| लौटना / फिर जाना (return) | Literal/relational turning back | Sufficient, but crowds against baseline’s मन फिराव (repentance) — must be fenced (see Part B) |
| वफ़ादारी (general Hindi word for “loyalty/faithfulness”) | Secular loyalty (e.g., to an employer, a friend) | Available and not doctrinally dangerous, but too thin on its own to carry the covenant-oath weight of 1:16-17; best used as a descriptive gloss in lesson prose, not as the technical rendering of the oath itself |
Recommended strategy: No single missing-term gap; Loyalty and Faithfulness is carried by an accumulation of ordinary verbs (leave, return, go, lodge, die, bury, part) whose cumulative force, not any one lexical choice, constitutes the doctrine. The strategy is therefore structural preservation of the full oath unit (1:16-17 rendered as one uninterrupted rhetorical sequence) rather than individual-term substitution. The self-maledictory oath formula (#11 in the core glossary) is the one place requiring a dedicated multi-word legal-register phrase rather than a single term.
A6. Genealogy Pointing to David and Christ
| Available Hindi term | Normal semantic field | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| वंशावली (genealogy) | Formal lineage record | Sufficient as a genre-label term; no inherent weakness |
| दाऊद के वंश से (baseline: seed of David, reused exactly) | Physical Davidic descent | Sufficient and must be reused verbatim wherever Ruth’s genealogy connects to David — this is the direct linguistic bridge to the Romans/Galatians baseline’s already-Critical davidic_covenant and messianic_promise doctrines |
| नाम / मीरास (विरासत) (name/inheritance) | Legal-covenantal name-and-land preservation | Sufficient, but risks being read as a mere property-inheritance detail unless flagged as the doctrinal hinge connecting Kinsman-Redeemer law to the Messianic line |
Recommended strategy: No missing-vocabulary gap; the risk here is doctrinal connective-tissue, ensuring the Phase 2 translator recognizes that 4:18-22’s genealogy is not incidental back-matter but the narrative’s theological destination, retroactively revealing every earlier “ordinary” event (famine, gleaning, threshing-floor risk) as providentially aimed at David — and, per Matthew 1:5-6, at Christ. Recommend a standing cross-reference note tying genealogy, seed_of_david, and providence (happened_chance_providence) together at 4:13-17.
Part B — Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
Unlike Romans/Galatians, where most Critical/High risk stemmed from Hindu-tradition vocabulary collisions (dharma, karma, moksha, avatar), Ruth’s crowding problem is compounded: it must fence against (1) the same Hindu-tradition collisions the baseline already documents, AND (2) internal crowding against the baseline’s own established terms, because several Ruth terms sit adjacent to, but must remain distinct from, existing TM entries.
B1. हेसेद-neighborhood: अनुग्रह / दया / कृपा / करुणा-प्रेम
Four terms compete in one semantic space (unmerited kindness/favor). This is the single most crowded neighborhood in the book.
| Term | Reserved for | Must NOT be used for |
|---|---|---|
| अनुग्रह | Salvific grace (baseline, Critical) | Hesed scenes; ordinary human kindness (2:10,13 favor) |
| दया | Compassion toward suffering (baseline, Medium) | The full covenant-loyalty sense of hesed alone |
| कृपा | Situational, non-grace kindness (baseline, Medium) AND Ruth’s chen/favor (2:10,13, EXTEND) | Salvific grace contexts; the covenant-title sense of hesed |
| करुणा-प्रेम | Hesed specifically (NEW, Critical) | Generic kindness without covenant dimension; salvific grace |
Fence rule: Every occurrence of any of these four terms in Ruth teaching material must carry (at minimum on first use per document) an explicit note stating which of the other three it is not. This is non-negotiable given how easily an untrained Hindi reader — or a translator working quickly — could default to अनुग्रह for any “God/Boaz was kind” statement.
B2. Divine-name neighborhood: प्रभु / परमेश्वर / यहोवा / सर्वशक्तिमान
Ruth introduces a genuine new gap the Romans/Galatians baseline never had to solve: the OT Tetragrammaton occurring ~17 times in a single short book, alongside the generic category-term for deity and a testing-context divine title.
| Term | Reserved for | Risk if confused |
|---|---|---|
| प्रभु (baseline) | NT Christological Lordship confession (κύριος, “Jesus is Lord”) | Using प्रभु for YHWH would blur the OT covenant-name into the NT confession formula — a distinct theological category |
| परमेश्वर (baseline) | Generic Elohim/theos, category-term for God | Insufficiently specific for YHWH’s proper-name force in the self-maledictory oath (1:17) |
| यहोवा (NEW, dedicated) | The Tetragrammaton specifically | If replaced by परमेश्वर, the reader loses the fact that Ruth swears on God’s own proper covenant name — an act of covenant self-identification remarkable for a Moabite outsider |
| सर्वशक्तिमान (EXTEND, sanctioned exception) | The specific title “Almighty/Shaddai” (1:20-21) | Contains शक्ति, otherwise forbidden root per baseline power_of_god; retained ONLY as a fixed traditional proper-title, never generalized to any other “power of God” context in Ruth |
Fence rule: यहोवा and प्रभु must never be interchanged; consistency-tracking across all ~17 YHWH occurrences is a dedicated Phase 2 QA task distinct from the baseline’s प्रभु tracking. सर्वशक्तिमान’s शक्ति-root exception must be documented with a standing translator’s note the first time it appears in any Ruth document, to prevent Phase 2 workers from treating it as license to use शक्ति-vocabulary elsewhere in Ruth (e.g., in worthy_woman, where the same root is deliberately avoided — see B4).
B3. Providence-neighborhood: विधान / भाग्य / नियति / किस्मत / संयोग
Already treated in A3 above; restated here because it is a crowding problem, not merely a missing-vocabulary problem. The danger is that भाग्य/नियति/किस्मत are the unmarked, default Hindi words a fluent speaker reaches for to say “it so happened” — they are not exotic alternatives requiring special effort to introduce by mistake, but the path of least resistance. This makes B3 arguably higher operational risk than B1/B2, where the forbidden alternatives (e.g., अवतार, मोक्ष) are at least marked as “different religious register” to a translator’s ear. भाग्य-family words carry no such warning bell in ordinary Hindi usage.
Fence rule: Automated validation (per the baseline’s Validation Rules pattern) must scan every Ruth segment touching 2:3, 2:20, or 4:14 for भाग्य|नियति|किस्मत|संयोग and flag any bare (non-parenthetical-note) occurrence for mandatory rejection, not just theologian flagging.
B4. Power/strength-neighborhood: सामर्थ्य / शक्ति / सर्वशक्तिमान / गुणवती
The baseline forbids शक्ति for God’s power (power_of_god) to avoid Hindu Shakti-goddess associations. Ruth touches this root twice more: once in a sanctioned exception (सर्वशक्तिमान, B2 above) and once in a human-descriptive context (eshet chayil, “worthy woman,” 3:11).
Fence rule: गुणवती स्त्री / समर्थ स्त्री (not शक्तिशाली स्त्री) for 3:11, preserving translation-memory discipline for the חַיִל/δύναμις root even where the referent is human, not divine — so that Phase 2 translators do not conclude the שׁ/श root is “safe” for Ruth simply because सर्वशक्तिमान was permitted as an exception elsewhere.
B5. Return/repentance-neighborhood: लौटना / फिर जाना / मन फिराव
The baseline reserves मन फिराव exclusively for the soteriological doctrine of repentance (turning from sin to God). Ruth chapter 1 uses שׁוּב (shub) twelve times as its dominant verb, describing Orpah, Ruth, and Naomi’s literal and relational turning/returning.
Fence rule: लौटना / फिर जाना only; मन फिराव must never appear in Ruth 1 teaching material even though an alert reader may sense a faint thematic echo (turning toward vs. away from covenant) — that echo, if worth drawing out pedagogically, belongs in a separate homiletical note, never in the base translation itself, to avoid implying Ruth 1 is a repentance narrative in the technical soteriological sense.
B6. People/community-neighborhood: लोग / प्रजा / जाति / समुदाय
Not previously flagged in the core glossary but worth fencing explicitly here: Hindi जाति (caste/community/ethnic-group) is a natural near-synonym for עַם that must be avoided for “your people shall be my people” (1:16), since जाति would map Ruth’s covenant-allegiance transfer directly onto India’s caste-identity system, precisely the collapse the core glossary’s entry #3 warns against without naming the specific forbidden alternative. समुदाय (generic “community”) is safer but theologically thinner.
Fence rule: लोग / प्रजा only for the covenant-community sense in 1:16; never जाति. Any lesson material unpacking this verse for an Indian audience should proactively address the caste-identity-transfer misreading rather than leaving it for the reader to construct unassisted.
Part C — Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
Ruth’s short, name-dense, narrative form generates more transliteration decisions per verse than Romans/Galatians. The following table records the governing decisions and their rationale.
| Item | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Proper names (Ruth, Naomi, Boaz, Orpah, Elimelech, Mahlon, Chilion, Obed, Jesse, David) | Transliterate, per established BSI OV/NV forms (रूत, नाओमी, बोअज़, ओर्पा, एलीमेलेक, महलोन, किल्योन, ओबेद, यिशै, दाऊद — दाऊद already fixed by baseline) | Standard practice; no doctrinal content in a bare proper name, but consistency with baseline दाऊद is mandatory where the genealogy reaches him |
| मारा (Naomi’s bitter self-renaming, 1:20) | Transliterate + mandatory footnote explaining the Hebrew pun (Naomi = “pleasant,” Mara = “bitter”) | The wordplay is untranslatable; a plain transliteration without the footnote loses 100% of the verse’s meaning, since नाओमी and मारा carry no inherent sense in Hindi |
| YHWH (יְהוָה) | Transliterate as यहोवा (not paraphrase as “the LORD” via प्रभु, not generic परमेश्वर) | Established BSI convention for the Tetragrammaton; paraphrasing would erase the proper-name/oath-name force load-bearing in 1:17 |
| שַׁדַּי (Shaddai) | Transliterate the title’s traditional Hindi form सर्वशक्तिमान, not a literal paraphrase of the Hebrew root (“sufficient one” / “mountain one,” disputed etymology) | Established title in Hindi Bible tradition outweighs etymological precision; flagged as a documented शक्ति-root exception (see B2/B4) |
| כֹּה וְכֹה self-maledictory oath formula (1:17) | Paraphrase as a full legal clause, not transliterate, not single-word gloss | No Hindi transliteration is possible (it is not a proper noun); the ancient oath-register must be reconstructed functionally: यहोवा मुझसे ऐसा ही करे, वरन इससे भी अधिक |
| גָּלָה מַרְגְּלוֹת “uncover the feet” (3:4,7) | Paraphrase literally + mandatory explanatory note, not idiomatic euphemism substitution | A domesticating Hindi idiom could either sanitize away the act’s real legal-symbolic content or (worse) import an unintended sexual connotation the Hebrew narrative itself explicitly guards against (3:14) |
| חֲלִיצָה sandal-removal custom (4:7-8) | Paraphrase + retain narrator’s own explanatory aside, add translator’s note if needed | The narrator already treats this as requiring explanation for his own original audience — a double signal that modern Hindi readers need the same help, not a domesticating substitute custom |
| גֹּאֵל go’el / קָרוֹב qarob (kinship-legal terms) | Paraphrase via coined compound, not transliterate | These are common Hebrew nouns, not proper names or liturgical formulas; transliteration would produce meaningless loanwords, whereas the coined कुटुम्बी छुटकारा देनेवाला communicates the concept functionally |
| חֶסֶד hesed | Paraphrase via coined compound, not transliterate | Same reasoning as go’el; हेसेद as a bare transliteration would communicate nothing to a Hindi reader without extensive glossing, whereas करुणा-प्रेम carries partial meaning on its own and is glossable |
| שַׂעַר gate, גֹּרֶן threshing floor | Paraphrase with ordinary Hindi terms (नगर द्वार, खलिहान) + brief cultural note | Common concrete nouns; no transliteration needed, low risk |
| אָמֵן-class liturgical formula “blessed be the LORD” (4:14) | Paraphrase using established यहोवा, not transliterate as a formula | धन्य है यहोवा follows ordinary Hindi syntax; no separate transliterated liturgical unit is needed the way आमीन is in the NT baseline |
General principle governing all decisions above: Transliterate proper names, established divine titles with fixed Hindi Bible-tradition forms (यहोवा, सर्वशक्तिमान), and untranslatable wordplay (मारा, with footnote). Paraphrase everything else — legal formulas, kinship-office nouns, theological compound concepts, and euphemisms — because Ruth’s technical vocabulary is overwhelmingly common-noun/common-verb Hebrew rather than fixed liturgical or proper-noun vocabulary, unlike much of the NT baseline’s territory.
Part D — Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision likelihood × how “invisible” the wrong choice would feel to a fluent Hindi speaker/translator).
-
מִקְרֶה “happened/by chance” (2:3, echoed 2:20, 4:14) — Highest risk in the book. The natural, unmarked Hindi glosses (भाग्य, नियति, किस्मत) are explicitly forbidden by three separate baseline doctrine rules (
providence,election,sovereignty), yet they are the path of least resistance for any translator not actively watching for this. A wrong choice here would not just miscommunicate a detail; it would invert the entire Providence doctrine into karma-adjacent fatalism at the book’s structural hinge-verse. Mandatory theologian review, every occurrence, with automated pre-screening rejection of bare भाग्य/नियति/किस्मत/संयोग. -
חֶסֶד hesed across all four chapters — Second-highest risk because it is the curriculum’s title doctrine, occurs (explicitly or thematically) at every major plot turn (1:8; 2:20; 3:10, plus the whole narrative’s implicit hesed-chain), and sits in the single most crowded Hindi semantic neighborhood in the book (B1: अनुग्रह/दया/कृपा/करुणा-प्रेम). A translator defaulting to अनुग्रह for any “kindness” moment would quietly re-import salvation-doctrine vocabulary into human relational scenes throughout the book. Mandatory theologian review, every occurrence.
-
גֹּאֵל go’el / kinsman-redeemer, chapters 3-4 — High risk because it is the book’s second title doctrine and its typological payload (anticipating Christ) depends entirely on preserving both the “kinsman” (covenant-family obligation) and “redeemer” (deliverance-at-a-price) components together; losing either half of the coined compound to a shortcut (bare छुटकारा, or bare कुटुम्बी, or the forbidden मुक्तिदाता) breaks the typology. Mandatory theologian review, every occurrence.
-
יְהוָה YHWH vs. אֱלֹהִים Elohim vs. NT baseline’s प्रभु — High risk primarily as a consistency hazard across ~17 occurrences rather than a single-verse doctrinal collision, but the self-maledictory oath (1:17) makes the specific choice at that verse Critical: Ruth swearing by YHWH’s own name is the narrative’s clearest signal that she has already transferred covenant allegiance before any formal legal process in chapters 2-4 begins. Mandatory theologian review; dedicated Phase 2 consistency-tracking log for यहोवा distinct from baseline प्रभु tracking.
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גָּלָה מַרְגְּלוֹת “uncover the feet” (3:4,7) and the threshing-floor scene generally — High risk because of the honor/shame collision potential: a literal Hindi rendering without the mandatory explanatory note could be read as scandalous in a way the Hebrew narrative itself explicitly forecloses (3:14). Given India’s own strong honor/shame social dynamics around women’s reputation, mishandling this passage risks the single largest pastoral (not merely lexical) misstep in the book. Mandatory native speaker AND theologian review.
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חֵן chen/favor (2:10,13) rendered via κρίς/χάρις in the LXX — High risk specifically because the Greek LXX term is identical to the NT term the baseline reserves exclusively for salvific अनुग्रह; a translator working from the Greek rather than the Hebrew, or simply pattern-matching against the Romans/Galatians glossary’s χάρις→अनुग्रह rule, could mechanically misapply the baseline’s own established equivalence in exactly the wrong direction. Requires an explicit override note citing this very risk at every occurrence.
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עַם “your people shall be my people” (1:16) vs. Hindi जाति — High risk in application even though the base lexical choice (लोग/प्रजा) is safe: the doctrine’s force in the Indian context depends on this NOT being read as a caste/community transfer, and जाति is close enough in ordinary usage to be an easy, invisible substitution error, especially in oral paraphrase or simplified lesson prose. Flag for theologian review of any accompanying explanatory material, not only the base translation.
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שַׁדַּי Almighty/Shaddai (1:20-21) and the general שׁ/श-root (शक्ति) exception it creates — Medium-High risk as an internal consistency hazard: having sanctioned one शक्ति-rooted exception (सर्वशक्तिमान) for a fixed traditional title, Phase 2 workers must not treat this as license to relax the baseline’s शक्ति-prohibition elsewhere in Ruth (e.g., 3:11’s “woman of חַיִל/dynamis”). Theologian review of every सर्वशक्तिमान occurrence; automated check that शक्ति does not appear elsewhere in Ruth output outside this one sanctioned title.
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כָּנָף wings/covering (2:12 metaphor; 3:9 literal gesture) — Medium-High risk as a cross-reference hazard rather than a single-verse ambiguity: if the two occurrences are translated independently without a coordinating note, the deliberate literary echo (Boaz becomes the human extension of the divine wings he himself invoked) is silently lost, even though neither individual rendering is doctrinally wrong on its own. Theologian review recommended for the coordinated pair, not just each verse separately.
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שׁוּב “return/turn back” (chapter 1, 12x) vs. baseline מן פיराव (repentance) — Medium risk: unlike items 1-9, a wrong choice here would not introduce a forbidden Hindu-tradition term, but would blur two distinct baseline theological categories (literal/relational return vs. soteriological repentance) if a translator, noticing the thematic resonance, imported मन फिराव as a “richer” rendering. Native speaker review sufficient, with an explicit boundary note in the style guide.
Summary Table — Gap Type by Doctrine
| Doctrine | Gap Type | Primary Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Hesed | Missing vocabulary (coinage required) inside a crowded neighborhood | Coined compound करुणा-प्रेम + mandatory three-way fence vs. अनुग्रह/दया/कृपा |
| Kinsman-Redeemer | Missing vocabulary (coinage required) | Coined compound कुटुम्बी छुटकारा देनेवाला built on baseline छुटकारा |
| Providence in Ordinary Life | Crowded neighborhood; forbidden terms are the default choice | Periphrastic clause-level rendering, never single-word gloss |
| Gentile Inclusion | Adequate vocabulary; narrative-discipline and caste-mapping risk | Consistent retention of मोआब/मोआबिन label; लोग/प्रजा never जाति |
| Loyalty and Faithfulness | Adequate vocabulary; cumulative/structural risk | Preserve full oath-unit structure (1:16-17); fence लौटना vs. मन फिराव |
| Genealogy → David/Christ | Adequate vocabulary; connective-tissue risk | Reuse दाऊद के वंश से verbatim; standing cross-reference note at 4:13-22 |
This document extends, and must never contradict, the baseline translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and doctrine_risk_registry.json established for Romans/Galatians. All NEW/EXTEND terms proposed here are recorded in 08_core_glossary.md and the accompanying assets/bible_term_registry.json for Ruth, pending translation-memory version increment before Phase 2 begins.