Galatians — Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package)

0. Purpose and Method

This document performs the Phase 1 Step 8 linguistic-gap function for the Galatians Hmong Language Package: it inventories where the destination language (RPA-script, formal/literary White Hmong, consistent with the Vajtswv Txoj Lus tradition) has (a) genuinely missing vocabulary requiring paraphrase or loanword strategy, (b) “crowded” semantic neighborhoods where one Hmong root is being asked to carry multiple, doctrinally incompatible senses, and (c) decision points where transliteration was chosen over paraphrase or vice versa. It closes with a ranked list of the letter’s highest-risk ambiguities for translator/reviewer prioritization.

This document does not re-litigate renderings already fixed in the Romans TM (assets/translation_memory.json) or already assigned in analysis/08_core_glossary.md / assets/bible_term_registry.json (Galatians). It explains why those choices were necessary given the shape of the Hmong lexicon, and flags where the fixed choice still leaves residual risk requiring teaching notes rather than further lexical engineering.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the 14 assigned doctrines: the available Hmong terms, their structural weaknesses, and the recommended mitigation strategy (lexical fencing, mandatory qualifier, teaching note, or escalation).

#	Doctrine	Available Hmong Term(s)	Structural Weakness	Recommended Strategy
1	Justification by Faith	Vajtswv txoj kev ncaj ncees / raug suav tias ncaj ncees / suav / suav tias	ncaj ncees is an achieved-virtue adjective in ordinary Hmong (a person “becomes” ncaj ncees through consistently right conduct); Hmong has no native forensic-accounting verb dedicated to legal imputation distinct from moral description.	Mandatory, inseparable pairing of the adjective with the reckoning-clause (suav tias) at every occurrence, per Romans TM rule; never allow ncaj ncees to stand alone in a justification context. Galatians 2:16 (core passage) is the single densest concentration of this construction in either letter — treat as the anchor teaching verse.
2	The True Gospel versus False Gospels	Txoj Moo Zoo (fixed) vs. ib Txoj Moo Zoo uas tsis yog Txoj Moo Zoo tiag (negated construction)	Hmong has no single lexeme meaning “counterfeit-but-superficially-identical message”; a literal “lwm Txoj Moo Zoo” (a different Good News) reads as one valid teaching among several, the opposite of Paul’s point.	Retain the self-negating periphrasis (...uas tsis yog...tiag, “which is not really…”) rather than a bare modifier; never abbreviate under space pressure (headers, quiz options).
3	Paul’s Apostleship	tus Tub Txib (fixed) + tsis yog los ntawm neeg... qualifier + kev qhia tshwm los (ntawm Vajtswv) (revelation)	tus Tub Txib bridges to a secular chief’s/clan-messenger role that carries derivative, human-appointed authority — precisely what Gal 1:1 denies of Paul’s own commission; kev qhia tshwm los (revelation) risks being heard alongside shamanic divination (ua neeb saib, spirit-disclosed hidden knowledge to a chosen recipient).	Always co-text the apostleship claim with the “not from man” qualifier; attach a brief contrast note distinguishing revelation-by-the-risen-Christ from divinatory disclosure whenever kev qhia tshwm los grounds an authority claim.
4	Law and Grace	Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes) + txiaj ntsim + tej haujlwm ntawm Txoj Kevcai	Both halves of the antithesis sit inside crowded neighborhoods (see §2 below): Kevcai shares its root with ancestral-religion vocabulary, and txiaj ntsim must resist the ever-present koob hmoov (fate/fortune) substitution pressure. Galatians intensifies this beyond Romans by adding a third “Kevcai” phrase — Txoj Kevcai ntawm Khetos (Law of Christ, 6:2) — inside the same letter.	Mandatory qualifier discipline on every Kevcai occurrence (see §2.1); explicit teaching note distinguishing all three: Law of Moses (cannot justify), works of the Law (excluded ground), Law of Christ (love-ethic, ch.6, not a justification requirement).
5	Crucified with Christ	raug ntsia nrog Khetos rau tus Ntoo Khaublig (new coinage, no Romans precedent)	Hmong has no existing fixed idiom for mystical co-crucifixion; a literal rendering risks being heard either (a) as a call to imitate physical suffering/self-mortification, or (b) as a merely poetic metaphor with no ontological weight.	Treat as a Critical new coinage requiring first-use footnote in every lesson; must always be taught alongside nyob hauv Khetos and Khetos nyob hauv kuv as three facets of one participatory-union doctrine, never presented as an ethical imitation-exercise.
6	The Abrahamic Covenant and Promise	lus cog tseg (promise, fixed) + tsab ntawv cog lus (nrog Vajtswv) (covenant, new) + tej koob hmoov ntawm Anplahas... (blessing of Abraham, new)	Hmong customary compacts (marriage alliances, clan agreements) are bilateral and renegotiable; there is no indigenous legal category for a unilateral, irrevocable divine grant. koob hmoov is licitly used here (eulogia ≠ charis) but sits one clause away from the permanently-forbidden grace-collision term.	Teaching note on covenant’s irrevocable, unilateral, divine-initiative character (contrast with clan compacts); koob hmoov permitted only inside the fixed, fully-qualified collocation tej koob hmoov ntawm Anplahas (los ntawm kev ntseeg, hauv Yexus Khetos) — never standalone in this doctrine.
7	The Law’s Purpose	Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes) + tus zov saib xyuas coj mus (kawm ntawv) (paidagōgos) + kev raug foom tsis zoo (raws li Txoj Kevcai) (curse)	No Hmong social institution parallels the ancient household-guardian (paidagōgos) — a custodial, disciplinary, temporary role distinct from a permanent teacher; mistranslating it as an ongoing “teacher” undercuts the “no longer under a guardian” (3:25) argument. foom tsis zoo (curse) is a live ritual-malediction category in folk religion.	Dedicated teaching note on the guardian’s temporary, custodial (not pedagogical-permanent) nature; curse vocabulary always anchored to “raws li Txoj Kevcai” (judicial, textual verdict) and taught alongside Christ’s redemption from it (3:13) as absorption, not appeasement.
8	Adoption and Sonship	raug muab coj los ua me tub (ntawm Vajtswv) + Abba, Leej Txiv + tus qub txeeg qub teg (all Romans-fixed)	Strong positive cultural bridge (real Hmong clan-adoption custom with full inheritance rights) — the main risk is under-teaching the uniqueness of divine sonship rather than collision.	Reuse Romans strategy unchanged; supplement with Galatians-specific note that this sonship is received through the Spirit (4:6-7) rather than through law-keeping, tying the doctrine back to Law-and-Grace.
9	Freedom in Christ	kev ywj pheej (hauv Khetos) (new coinage)	Bare kev ywj pheej in contemporary Hmong usage most readily evokes political/social liberation (freedom from a ruler, freedom of movement) — a live and salient register in Hmong refugee/diaspora historical memory — not freedom from legal condemnation and sin’s dominion.	Mandatory co-occurrence with its immediate scriptural qualification (5:13, “not… an opportunity for the flesh, but… serve one another through love”) at every occurrence; never present freedom in Christ as merely civic/social liberation.
10	Circumcision and the New Creation	kev txiav (raws li Txoj Kevcai Mauxes) (fixed, Medium) + tus tsim dua ua tus tshiab (hauv Khetos) (new creation, Critical)	Circumcision itself is a pure comprehension gap (no native practice). New Creation, however, sits directly beside a live ritual category: hu plig, the ceremony to call back and restore an existing wandering soul to wholeness — which is a restoration concept, whereas Paul’s kainē ktisis is an entirely new spiritual identity, not a repaired old one.	Circumcision: explanatory gloss only. New Creation: mandatory contrast note against hu plig-style restoration theology; must be framed as “a new making,” not “calling back what was lost.” Mandatory human theologian review (already flagged Critical in registry).
11	Flesh versus Spirit	lub cev nqaij tawv (neutral) vs. kev xav/kev ua raws li lub cev nqaij tawv (moral) vs. Vaj Ntsuj Plig	Hmong has one everyday word for “flesh/meat” (nqaij/nqaij tawv) that must bear two doctrinally incompatible senses; the moral sense is entirely periphrastic and not a natural collocation a Hmong speaker would produce spontaneously.	Absolute lexical fencing (see §2.2); the moral periphrasis must never be shortened to bare nqaij tawv even in condensed contexts (lists, quiz stems), because Gal 5:19-21’s Works-of-the-Flesh catalogue is the highest-density occurrence of the moral sense in either letter.
12	Fruit of the Spirit	cov txiv ntawm Vaj Ntsuj Plig	Two compounded risks: (a) dropped Vaj prefix would suggest the virtue-list is produced by an animistic human soul, not the divine Spirit; (b) the ninth listed item, pistis, here means “faithfulness/reliability” (character trait), not justifying “faith” (trust) — using the fixed kev ntseeg baseline for both senses in the same lesson risks conflating character-formation with the forensic faith of ch.2-3.	Vaj prefix non-negotiable at every occurrence (registry note already establishes this). Adopt a distinct rendering for the ninth fruit — kev ncaj ncees rau lus cog tseg (“faithfulness to one’s word/commitment”) — footnoted at first use, explicitly distinguished from kev ntseeg (justifying faith).
13	Faith Working through Love	kev ntseeg uas ua haujlwm los ntawm kev hlub	The verb ua haujlwm (“to work/produce effect”) sits dangerously close to the works-vocabulary (tej haujlwm ntawm Txoj Kevcai) that chs. 2-3 spent dismantling as a ground of justification; an unglossed hearer could reasonably infer “faith + loving deeds” is the real justifying combination.	Mandatory cross-reference teaching note at every occurrence, explicitly stating love is faith’s necessary expression/fruit, never an additional meritorious contribution; pair pedagogically with the Fruit-of-the-Spirit entry (love as first-listed fruit, 5:22) rather than with tej haujlwm ntawm Txoj Kevcai.
14	Bearing One Another’s Burdens	kwv lwm tus lub nra + Txoj Kevcai ntawm Khetos	The burden-bearing image itself is a strong, low-risk cultural bridge (shared field-labor/load-carrying custom). The companion phrase Txoj Kevcai ntawm Khetos (Law of Christ) reuses the flagged Kevcai root a third time in the letter, risking a slide back into “the Law of Christ is a new rule-code to keep” moralism.	Reuse kwv lwm tus lub nra freely, no fencing needed. Txoj Kevcai ntawm Khetos requires the mandatory distinguishing note (already logged in the registry) at every occurrence: this is the love-ethic fulfilled by the Spirit, not a Mosaic-style justification code.

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2. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

Galatians concentrates several Hmong root-morphemes into more distinct doctrinal senses within a single, shorter letter than Romans did across sixteen chapters. This section identifies each crowded neighborhood, lists every doctrinally distinct sense sharing the root, and specifies the fence (disambiguating device) required to keep them apart.

2.1 The kevcai (custom/rite) root — now carrying FOUR distinct senses

Sense	Hmong Phrase	Status
Mosaic/Divine Law	Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes)	Fixed, mandatory qualifier
Ancestral religious custom (the competing referent)	kev cai dab qhuas	Never used for biblical Law; named here only to mark the collision zone
The rite of circumcision	kev txiav (raws li Txoj Kevcai Mauxes)	Fixed, Medium risk
The rite of baptism	kev cai raus dej	Fixed, High risk (ritual-purification collision)
The ethic of Christ (“Law of Christ”)	Txoj Kevcai ntawm Khetos	NEW in Galatians — High risk

Fence: every one of the five phrases above must retain its full qualifier string with zero abbreviation. Galatians is the first curriculum in this pipeline to place all five inside the same short letter (esp. chs. 2-6), so a single dropped qualifier anywhere creates a live risk of readers hearing “the Law of Christ” as continuous with “ancestral custom” via the shared root. Recommendation: any lesson unit touching more than one kevcai-family term in the same paragraph must include a one-sentence disambiguation table or footnote enumerating which sense is active.

2.2 The sarx/flesh (nqaij tawv) root — TWO senses, high co-occurrence density

Galatians 4 (Hagar/Sarah typology: Ishmael “born according to the flesh” [neutral] vs. Isaac “born according to promise/Spirit”) places both senses within a few verses of each other — a higher local density than anywhere in Romans. The fence (fixed neutral vs. moral periphrasis, per Romans TM) must be applied with special vigilance in ch.4, and again at the Works-of-the-Flesh catalogue (5:19-21), the single largest concentration of the moral sense in the corpus.

Fence: never permit bare nqaij or nqaij tawv unqualified by either the neutral noun phrase or the moral periphrasis in any Galatians-derived content; ch. 4 and ch. 5 require first-use re-glossing even within the same lesson, given the sense-switch mid-argument.

2.3 The khawv koob (shamanic spell-craft) neighborhood — THREE colliding terms

Galatians is unique in this pipeline for naming this collision three separate times, each requiring its own careful fence:

Term	Hmong Rendering	Passage	Collision
Sorcery (works of the flesh)	kev ua khawv koob yaig	5:20	Direct, named condemnation of the exact practice-category associated with Hmong shamanism
Bewitched (rhetorical)	raug ua khawv koob rau...	3:1	Rhetorical figure of speech, NOT a literal claim validating spell-mechanics
Anathema/curse formula	cia nws raug muab cais pov tseg rau txoj kev puas tsuaj	1:8-9	Deliberately built WITHOUT foom-family vocabulary to avoid implying a ritual/spell-based curse-mechanism

Fence: these three must never be taught in isolation from one another; a single consolidated teaching note is recommended addressing all three together, since a Galatians curriculum that condemns sorcery (5:20) while separately using spell-adjacent rhetoric elsewhere (3:1) without clarification risks internal inconsistency in the eyes of a convert audience. The curse formula (1:8-9) must be kept lexically clean of khawv koob/foom vocabulary specifically because 5:20 condemns that practice-category by name — using cursed-vocabulary to pronounce God’s own judgment would blur the very line the letter draws.

2.4 The hmoov/koob hmoov (fate/fortune/blessing) neighborhood — narrowly reopened

The Romans baseline permanently forbids koob hmoov for charis (grace). Galatians reopens a narrow, fully-fenced exception: eulogia (“blessing of Abraham,” 3:14) is a distinct Greek lexeme, and koob hmoov is lexically appropriate for ordinary material/covenantal blessing. However, because 3:14 explicitly identifies this blessing with receiving the Spirit through faith — a salvific referent — the fate/ritual-correctness connotation of koob hmoov could re-infect this passage exactly as it would charis if left unanchored.

Fence: koob hmoov is licensed in Galatians only within the fixed collocation tej koob hmoov ntawm Anplahas (los ntawm kev ntseeg, hauv Yexus Khetos) — the qualifying clause is structurally mandatory, not optional, every time. It must never appear as a bare noun anywhere near a justification or grace context. This is a narrower license than any other term in either Language Package and should be flagged for extra native-speaker scrutiny in every occurrence.

2.5 The hwjchim/spiritual-power neighborhood — a near-miss, not fully absent

Unlike Romans, Galatians does not foreground dynamis/hwjchim as a headline term. However, the stoicheia tou kosmou (“elemental spirits/principles,” 4:3, 4:9) sits on the same cosmological shelf as hwjchim: Hmong traditional cosmology populates the world with nature-spirits and household/ancestor spirits (dab) that possess real (if lesser) power and must be ritually served. The chosen rendering (tej yam pib xyaum ntawm lub ntiajteb no, “elementary/rudimentary things of this world”) deliberately avoids dab-vocabulary to prevent implying these are legitimately potent spirit-beings worthy of residual respect — but this also means the rendering under-communicates the term’s ambiguous referent (it may denote actual cosmic powers, not merely abstract “principles”).

Fence: mandatory teaching note stating plainly that these “elements” are explicitly “not gods” (4:8) and that both Gentile idol-worship and a return to Jewish ritual-calendar legalism are equally “weak and worthless” alternatives — this is the passage’s own argumentative point and must not be lost to an over-cautious, de-spiritualized paraphrase.

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3. Missing Vocabulary (Genuine Lexical Gaps)

These items have no native Hmong lexeme or fixed idiom and were bridged by descriptive paraphrase rather than a single-word rendering. Unlike §2, these are comprehension gaps, not collision risks — but paraphrase quality directly affects doctrinal clarity.

Missing Concept	Gap Type	Paraphrase Used	Residual Risk
diathēkē — unilateral, irrevocable covenant	No legal category (Hmong compacts are bilateral/renegotiable)	tsab ntawv cog lus (nrog Vajtswv)	Must be taught, not merely translated: irrevocability and divine unilateral initiative are argumentative, not lexical, information.
paidagōgos — custodial household guardian (not a teacher)	No parallel social institution	tus zov saib xyuas coj mus (kawm ntawv)	Risk of being heard as a permanent teacher-role, undercutting “no longer under a guardian” (3:25).
stoicheia tou kosmou — elemental spirits/principles	Ambiguous referent in the source text itself, compounded by a live but incompatible target-culture category (dab)	tej yam pib xyaum ntawm lub ntiajteb no	See §2.5.
stigmata — Paul’s persecution-scars as ownership marks	No exact parallel; bridged via livestock/property-branding imagery	tej cim (raug ntaus mob rau) ntawm Yexus	Should be taught beside qhev (bondservant) to reinforce total-ownership, not merely “battle scars.”
allēgoreō — typological allegorical reading of historical narrative	Hmong oral tradition has rich folktale/parable convention, but not a genre distinct from fable	zaj lus piv txwv qhia ntxiv	Risk that Genesis is heard as being treated as non-historical fable; mandatory note affirming typological history, not invented parable.
plērōma tou chronou — the fullness/completion of appointed time	No fixed idiom for providentially-appointed historical timing (as opposed to mere calendar time)	thaum lub sijhawm txog tag tiag tiag lawm	Low risk; descriptive only.
Abba — Aramaic intimacy-marker	Untranslatable affective loanword	Retained as loanword + gloss Abba, Leej Txiv	Already resolved in Romans TM; carried forward unchanged.
Ninth Fruit-of-the-Spirit sense of pistis = “faithfulness” (not justifying faith)	Two English/Greek senses share one lexeme; Hmong kev ntseeg was fixed for the trust/belief sense only	Recommend distinct coinage kev ncaj ncees rau lus cog tseg	New; requires formal TM-revision logging (see §5).

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Galatians introduces several proper names and one technical intimacy-marker not present in Romans. The following decisions were made, consistent with the established register conventions (analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md §0 conventions inherited from the Romans package):

Item	Decision	Rationale
Yexus Khetos, Vajtswv, tus Tswv	Transliteration/established compound (inherited)	Already fixed Hmong Christian vocabulary; no paraphrase considered.
Abba	Transliteration retained + gloss	Untranslatable affective loanword; Paul himself retains the Aramaic within a Greek-audience letter — the same rhetorical move is preserved by retaining it within a Hmong-audience translation, with Leej Txiv supplied immediately as gloss.
Anplahas (Abraham), Yudas (Jews), Kilis (Greeks), Yixalayees (Israel), Yeluxalees (Jerusalem), Xinais (Sinai)	Established transliteration (proper names)	Follows existing Hmong Bible tradition’s standard transliteration table for biblical proper names; no paraphrase possible or desirable for proper names.
Haka (Hagar), Xala (Sarah)	Transliteration, first use requiring mandatory footnote	Unlike the more familiar Anplahas, these two names carry unfamiliar narrative content for a non-OT-literate hearer; transliteration alone is insufficient — the footnote must supply the underlying Genesis narrative and its typological function (bondage/Sinai vs. promise/freedom) before the allegory can be followed.
stoicheia tou kosmou	Paraphrase, not transliteration	A transliterated loanword (e.g., “stoikeia”) would be doctrinally opaque and would forfeit the necessary contrast-teaching against both idol-worship and legalism; paraphrase was required despite the residual ambiguity noted in §2.5/§3.
hilastērion-style Critical terms (propitiation, inherited from Romans, not reused in Galatians)	N/A	Not present in Galatians; noted only to confirm no new transliteration decision was needed for this category.
anathema estō	Paraphrase, not transliteration	A transliterated loanword would sidestep rather than resolve the collision with folk-curse vocabulary (foom); the descriptive judicial-exclusion paraphrase was required, per the same logic already applied to hilastērion and baptisma in the Romans baseline.
pharmakeia (sorcery)	Paraphrase using the exact native term for the practice being condemned (not a euphemism, not a loanword)	Analogous to the Romans baseline’s treatment of eidōlon/dab mlom: the term must name the real practice-category precisely because Paul is condemning exactly that category; softening to a vaguer “witchcraft in general” term, or opaquely transliterating, would blunt the letter’s direct address to converts from shamanic backgrounds.
kainē ktisis (new creation)	Paraphrase, deliberately built to avoid overlap with hu plig-family vocabulary	A literal “tsim dua tshiab” alone would risk being heard as restoration (the semantic space hu plig occupies); the fuller phrase tus tsim dua ua tus tshiab (hauv Khetos) was chosen to lean toward “made into a new one,” not “brought back to a former state” — still imperfect, hence its Critical/mandatory-review status.

General principle applied: transliteration is reserved for proper names and a small closed set of already-fixed Hmong Christian vocabulary items (inherited from Romans); every doctrinally load-bearing common noun/verb is paraphrased, following the Romans package’s precedent that opaque loanwords forfeit the contrast-teaching the collision terms specifically require.

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5. New Items Requiring Formal TM-Revision Logging

Per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md §2 rule 4, the following Galatians-surfaced items are ad hoc renderings not yet permanent TM entries and must be logged for a future TM-revision review rather than treated as silently permanent:

1. raug ntsia nrog Khetos rau tus Ntoo Khaublig (crucified with Christ) — Critical, no Romans precedent.
2. kev ywj pheej (hauv Khetos) (freedom in Christ) — Critical, named curriculum doctrine.
3. tus tsim dua ua tus tshiab (hauv Khetos) (new creation) — Critical, mandatory theologian review already flagged in registry.
4. tej yam pib xyaum ntawm lub ntiajteb no (elemental spirits) — Critical, mandatory theologian review already flagged.
5. kev ua khawv koob yaig (sorcery) — Critical, highest-priority collision in this Language Package per registry note.
6. raug ua khawv koob rau... (bewitched, rhetorical) — Critical, must be taught jointly with #5 above.
7. cia nws raug muab cais pov tseg rau txoj kev puas tsuaj (anathema) — Critical.
8. ib Txoj Moo Zoo uas tsis yog Txoj Moo Zoo tiag (false gospel) — Critical.
9. Txoj Kevcai ntawm Khetos (Law of Christ) — High, reuses flagged Kevcai root a third distinct way.
10. Proposed distinct rendering kev ncaj ncees rau lus cog tseg for the ninth Fruit-of-the-Spirit item (pistis = faithfulness) — recommended new coinage, not yet adopted; requires formal review before use.

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6. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision specificity × likelihood of translator/teacher error), highest first:

1. Sorcery / pharmakeia (5:20) — kev ua khawv koob yaig. The single most direct doctrinal collision in either Language Package: Paul names, by category, the exact practice associated with Hmong shamanism (khawv koob, ua neeb ua yaig) and declares it categorically incompatible with inheriting the Kingdom of God. Requires the most careful pastoral framing of the entire curriculum — condemnation of the practice without gratuitous shaming of Hmong cultural identity as a whole. Ranked #1 because it is simultaneously Critical-doctrine, Critical-collision, and pastorally the most sensitive verse in the letter for a Hmong convert audience.

2. “Bewitched” / ebaskanen (3:1) — rhetorical spell-vocabulary used non-literally, one chapter removed from #1’s literal condemnation of the same practice-domain. High risk of internal inconsistency if not taught jointly with #1; a careless reading could imply Paul validates the literal mechanics of curses/spells he elsewhere condemns as incompatible with the Kingdom.

3. Stoicheia tou kosmou (elemental spirits/principles, 4:3, 4:9). Sits directly atop the Hmong cosmology of nature- and ancestor-spirits (dab); the chosen de-spiritualized paraphrase risks under-communicating that Paul may mean actual, if subordinate, cosmic powers — while any more concrete rendering risks conceding those powers greater legitimacy than 4:8’s “not gods” verdict allows. Genuinely difficult two-sided risk, not resolvable by lexical choice alone.

4. “New Creation” (6:15) vs. hu plig soul-restoration ritual. The climactic doctrinal answer to the whole letter’s circumcision controversy sits one semantic step away from a live, actively-practiced Hmong ritual category (restoring/calling back an existing soul) that has the opposite logical shape (repair of the old vs. creation of the new).

5. Curse formula (anathema estō, 1:8-9) vs. foom ritual-malediction vocabulary. The opening chapter’s most solemn pronouncement is deliberately built to avoid the very vocabulary family condemned in #1 and #2 — a fence that must hold across every future retelling/paraphrase of Galatians 1 in curriculum materials, footnotes, and quiz stems.

6. Curse of the Law (katara, 3:10-13) vs. capricious spirit-curse and ritual appeasement. Parallel to the Romans orgē theou collision but sharper here because 3:13 explicitly says Christ “became a curse for us” — a phrase that, unfенced, could be heard as Christ performing a ritual self-curse-absorption analogous to a shamanic scapegoat/substitute-offering practice rather than a judicial-covenantal transaction.

7. “Law of Christ” (6:2) vs. “Law of Moses” — the third distinct sense loaded onto the Kevcai root within one letter. Real risk of readers concluding Christ has simply issued a replacement rule-code, silently reintroducing law-keeping as a justification requirement exactly where the letter intends the opposite.

8. Christos dōrean apethanen — “Christ died for nothing” (2:21), the logical linchpin of the core passage (2:15-21). The untranslatable Greek pun linking this clause to Romans 3:24’s “justified freely” is lost in Hmong; without a supplementary footnote connecting the two, learners may miss that this is the letter’s argumentative center of gravity, not merely a rhetorical flourish.

9. Freedom in Christ (kev ywj pheej, chs. 2-5) heard as political/social liberation. Given the salience of freedom/liberation narratives in Hmong historical and diaspora memory, this term carries an unusually strong “attractor” toward a non-theological reading unless the 5:13 self-qualification is attached at every occurrence.

10. Koob hmoov narrowly reopened for “Blessing of Abraham” (3:14). The single most delicate exception to an otherwise-absolute Romans-baseline prohibition; any drift toward using koob hmoov unqualified elsewhere in a Galatians lesson (e.g., an offhand reference to “the blessing” without the full anchoring clause) would reopen the exact sola-gratia collision the Romans package permanently closed.

11. Faith Working through Love (5:6) heard as reintroducing works-righteousness. The verb ua haujlwm sits one register-slip away from tej haujlwm ntawm Txoj Kevcai, the very phrase chs. 2-3 spent excluding as a ground of justification.

12. “Israel of God” (6:16) exegetical ambiguity. Lower collision-risk than items above (no live traditional-religion referent) but High doctrinal stakes: a translator resolving the ambiguity either toward pure supersessionism or toward excluding the church entirely would foreclose an interpretive question the source text itself leaves open, and would additionally strain against the Romans baseline’s all_israel_will_be_saved caution.

13. Diathēkē / covenant’s irrevocability (chs. 3-4). Comprehension-gap rather than collision-risk, but foundational to the entire Abrahamic-covenant argument; a translator who treats tsab ntawv cog lus as a renegotiable bilateral compact (the Hmong cultural default) undercuts 3:15-18’s entire logic.

14. Ninth Fruit-of-the-Spirit item (pistis = faithfulness) conflated with justifying faith (5:22-23). Lower urgency than the items above (Medium comprehension issue, not a traditional-religion collision) but worth tracking because the same Hmong word (kev ntseeg) is otherwise reserved throughout both Language Packages for the forensic, justifying sense; conflation would blur a distinction Paul himself does not make lexically explicit in Greek either, making it easy to overlook.

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7. Governing Note

This gap analysis extends, and does not contradict, the Romans Hmong TM baseline (assets/translation_memory.json) and the Galatians 08_core_glossary.md / bible_term_registry.json companion documents. Every fencing strategy, paraphrase decision, and ranked risk above is intended to inform (not override) the forthcoming Phase 2 doctrine-risk registry and AI translation requirements documents for this Language Package. Items logged in §5 require formal TM-revision review before being treated as permanent; no Critical or High risk_level rendering in this document should be altered without that review.