Joel — Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package, Phase 1, Step 8)

0. Purpose, Scope, and Method

This analysis answers four questions for the destination language (Hmong, RPA, White Hmong/Hmong Daw) across the whole book of Joel (chapters 1-3), with Joel 2:28-32 (the outpouring of the Spirit) as theological anchor but never as scope boundary:

1. Doctrine vocabulary matrix — for each of the five assigned doctrines, what Hmong vocabulary is available, what are its weaknesses, and what is the recommended handling strategy?
2. Missing vocabulary vs. crowded semantic neighborhoods — where does Hmong lack any term at all (a comprehension gap), versus where does Hmong have a term that is already “occupied” by a competing traditional-religion referent (a collision requiring a fence)?
3. Transliteration vs. paraphrase — for proper nouns and untranslatable technical terms, which decision was made and why?
4. Ranked highest-risk ambiguities — across the whole letter, which specific lexical choices carry the greatest risk of doctrinal inversion or neutralization if mishandled in Phase 2 generation?

Method: every term in analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json was cross-checked against (a) the Romans Hmong TM’s already-documented collision classes (hwjchim/shamanic power, hmoov/fate, dawb huv/ritual purity, pehawm/spirit-veneration, fij/sacrificial appeasement, kevcai/ancestral custom, npau taws/capricious spirit-anger, ntsuj plig/multi-soul animism), and (b) Joel-specific traditional-religion categories not present in Romans’ urban/Greco-Roman setting but load-bearing here: the Hmong divinatory day-almanac (hnub zoo/hnub phem), dream- and vision-based ancestor communication, libation ritual, and locust/crop-failure spirit-appeasement custom. No chapter of Joel is treated as out of scope; §1 and §5 below explicitly confirm chapter-by-chapter coverage.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

1.1 The Day of the Lord

Element	Detail
Available Hmong terms	hnub (day, bare); tus Tswv (the LORD, INHERITED); descriptive compound Hnub Loj thiab Txaus Ntshai ntawm Tus Tswv (proposed NEW fixed phrase, registry #14)
Weaknesses	Hmong culture has no native single-word equivalent for a personally-executed, moral, eschatological “Day.” Instead it has a culturally dominant competing framework: the almanac/shaman-consulted auspicious/inauspicious day system (hnub zoo / hnub phem), used to select dates for weddings, funerals, house-building, and travel. This is an impersonal, calendrical, fate-adjacent system unrelated to personal divine moral judgment. A bare hnub anywhere near Joel’s central refrain risks total assimilation into this competing frame — the single highest doctrinal stake in the whole book, since “the Day of the LORD” is Joel’s structuring theological category (occurring in some form in 1:15; 2:1-2, 11, 31; 3:14, and echoed at 3:18’s “in that day”).
Recommended strategy	Lock the full descriptive phrase Hnub Loj thiab Txaus Ntshai ntawm Tus Tswv as a single, non-abbreviating fixed collocation, structurally parallel to the Romans-baseline treatment of Vaj Ntsuj Plig and Vajtswv hwjchim — i.e., the qualifier is never optional, never dropped for space, and never replaced by bare hnub even in headers, titles, or quiz options. Pair with a mandatory first-occurrence contrast note: this Day is fixed by tus Tswv’s own moral purpose, not read off a calendar or determined by ritual correctness; it cannot be avoided by choosing a different date or performing a rite. Recommend the note explicitly name the hnub zoo/hnub phem system so learners recognize and set aside the analogy rather than unconsciously importing it.

1.2 Repentance and Return to God

Element	Detail
Available Hmong terms	tig rov qab los cuag Vajtswv, hloov siab lees txim (return/repent, registry #27); muab lub siab dua tawg, tsis yog muab lub tsho dua tawg xwb (rend the heart not the garment, #28); tsoos khaub ncaws ntsuag (sackcloth, #22); quaj nyiav, quaj ntsuag (lament/wail, #21); muaj txoj kev khuv leej, hlub, ua siab ntev, thiab muaj txiaj ntsim ntau (God’s compassionate character, #29)
Weaknesses	Hmong customary “repair” of a ruptured relationship with offended ancestors or nature-spirits after misfortune (illness, crop failure, accident) follows a well-established ritual-technical pattern: divination to identify the offended spirit, prescribed offerings (fij), and sometimes shamanic mediation (txiv neeb) — with efficacy understood to flow from correct ritual performance, not primarily from inward contrition. tig rov qab / hloov siab lees txim and the mourning vocabulary (quaj ntsuag, tsoos khaub ncaws ntsuag) are lexically excellent bridges, but risk being heard as entry points into that same technical-ritual framework — i.e., “if we perform the right mourning rite, the calamity will be reversed” — rather than as expressions of a genuinely internal, relational reorientation toward the true God alone.
Recommended strategy	Exploit Joel’s own built-in textual safeguard: 2:12-13 explicitly contrasts outward rite (garments) with inward reality (heart) — “muab lub siab dua tawg, tsis yog muab lub tsho dua tawg xwb.” This verse must always be taught paired with 2:12’s tig rov qab / hloov siab lees txim, never presented alone, so that the anti-ritualism is textually self-evident rather than imported. Teaching notes must state plainly: no ritual object, offering, or correctly-performed mourning custom produces reversal; only the change of heart which God himself, being muaj txoj kev khuv leej... thiab muaj txiaj ntsim ntau, receives.

1.3 The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit

Element	Detail
Available Hmong terms	Vaj Ntsuj Plig (Holy Spirit, INHERITED, registry #3); nchuav (pour out, #4); lub cev nqaij tawv (all flesh, neutral, INHERITED, #5); cev Vajtswv Lus (prophesy, #6); npau suav (dreams, #7); yog pom zaj yeeb yaj kiab (visions, #8); qhev / tus qhev poj niam (bondservants, INHERITED + feminine extension, #9-10)
Weaknesses	This is the single densest cluster of collision risk in Joel because the core passage (2:28-29) combines five distinct traditional-religion contact points in three verses: (a) nchuav risks being heard as a ritual libation-pour to spirits; (b) npau suav (dreams) and yog pom zaj yeeb yaj kiab (visions) are, in Hmong tradition, the primary channel by which ancestors/spirits are believed to communicate, normally requiring elder or shamanic interpretation; (c) cev Vajtswv Lus (prophesy) surface-resembles shamanic trance-speech attributed to a spirit-guide; (d) the social-status merism (qhev/bondservants alongside sons, daughters, old, young) depends on qhev retaining its full dishonored-slave force, or the radical-inclusion point of the passage is lost. Every one of these is individually manageable, but their co-occurrence in a single short unit means a single missed qualifier can cascade into the whole passage being misheard as “a spirit-medium event,” which would functionally invert this doctrine at its most quoted text (cf. Acts 2:17-21).
Recommended strategy	Treat 2:28-29 as a single fenced unit requiring a combined teaching note, not five separate footnotes scattered through the verse. The unit must state together: (1) the Pourer and the poured-out reality are both explicitly the one true God’s own Spirit (Vaj Ntsuj Plig, never bare); (2) nchuav here is sovereign divine self-giving, not a liquid rite performed toward or by spirits; (3) the dreams/visions/prophecy named are all explicitly Spirit-sourced, in contrast with the ancestor/spirit-sourced dreams and shamanic trance-speech otherwise assumed in Hmong life; (4) the servant/free merism is deliberately retained at full social-status strength to teach that the Spirit crosses every human boundary. See §3.1 for the fencing detail on each sub-term.

1.4 The Locust Plague as Divine Judgment

Element	Detail
Available Hmong terms	plaub pab kooj txiav qoob loo tuaj ib pab zuj zus (four locust-names, descriptive, #20); tub rog loj thiab muaj zog (locust-army, #26); tus ua haujlwm pab Vajtswv (priests, INHERITED, #23)
Weaknesses	Crop failure/pest infestation in Hmong traditional belief is regularly attributed to an offended ancestral or field/nature spirit, diagnosed by divination and addressed through prescribed sacrificial offering (fij) and sometimes shamanic mediation — a causally ritual-technical explanation for agricultural disaster, structurally parallel to (but theologically opposite from) Joel’s claim that the locusts are the LORD’s own moral-judgment instrument sent because of covenant unfaithfulness. Since Hebrew has four distinct, partially-overlapping locust-stage terms (gazam/arbeh/yeleq/chasil) and Hmong has no matching taxonomy, the fourfold repetition’s rhetorical weight (totality/relentlessness of judgment) is also at risk of being flattened into a single generic “bugs ate the crops” statement.
Recommended strategy	Render the fourfold vocabulary as a single escalating descriptive phrase (already fixed as plaub pab kooj txiav qoob loo tuaj ib pab zuj zus, “four locust-waves coming one after another consuming the crops”) rather than attempting four separate lexemes, and add an explanatory note on the totality-of-judgment rhetorical function so this comprehension-gap does not silently disappear. Independently, and more importantly, every occurrence must carry the moral-causation teaching note: this is tus Tswv’s own commanded, purposeful judgment for covenant unfaithfulness (reinforced by the explicit military reframing in 2:2-11, tub rog loj thiab muaj zog), and the correct response is repentance toward God (see §1.2), never divination or ritual offering to any spirit.

1.5 Restoration and Blessing after Repentance

Element	Detail
Available Hmong terms	qoob loo, kua txiv hmab tshiab, thiab roj txiv ntoo (grain/new wine/oil, #31); thim rov qab tej xyoo uas cov kooj tau noj lawm (restore the years, #32); nej yuav paub tias kuv yog tus Tswv... thiab tsis muaj lwm tus Vajtswv dua li (self-identification/no-other formula, #33); tsis txhob cia nws qub txeeg qub teg raug luag thuam (spare the inheritance, #30); ib lub qhov dej ntws tawm hauv Vajtswv lub tsev tuaj (fountain from the house of the LORD, #41)
Weaknesses	This doctrine’s vocabulary is comparatively low-collision — agrarian-blessing imagery (grain, new wine, oil) maps cleanly onto a rice/highland-farming Hmong economy, and the exclusivist “I am the LORD, there is no other” formula is a positive teaching opportunity rather than a risk. The principal weakness is not collision but structural: the restoration vocabulary in ch.2 is the deliberate positive mirror of the judgment vocabulary in ch.1 (what the locusts consumed is precisely what is restored) and is later deliberately repurposed in ch.3 for judgment on the nations (harvest/winepress imagery, registry #38) — a wordplay easily lost if each occurrence is translated independently without cross-referencing.
Recommended strategy	Enforce identical rendering of the shared agrarian-commodity vocabulary (qoob loo, kua txiv hmab tshiab, thiab roj txiv ntoo) at every occurrence (1:10, 2:19, 2:24, 3:18) so a Hmong reader can perceive the judgment→restoration structural echo, and add an explicit teaching note at 3:13 flagging the ironic re-use of harvest/winepress imagery for judgment on the nations, so the positive/negative wordplay is taught rather than silently lost. The no-other formula (#33) should be flagged in teaching notes as a direct, positive anti-syncretism opportunity against Hmong multi-spirit cosmology — one of the few places in Joel where the traditional-religion contact point strengthens rather than threatens the doctrine.

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2. Missing Vocabulary Inventory (Comprehension Gaps with No Collision)

These are terms for which Hmong simply has no existing lexeme or fixed idiom at all — not because a competing traditional-religion referent occupies the space, but because the referent (a physical object, taxonomy, or geography) is foreign to the Hmong highland Southeast Asian experience. These require descriptive paraphrase and a comprehension-level gloss, not doctrinal fencing.

Term	Gap type	Resolution	Registry ref
Sackcloth (saq)	No native mourning-garment equivalent	Descriptive: tsoos khaub ncaws ntsuag (“mourning clothing”)	#22
Vision (chazon)	No single stable Hmong Christian lexeme distinct from “dream”	Descriptive: yog pom zaj yeeb yaj kiab (“seeing a revelatory picture/scene”)	#8
Olive-grafting is not present in Joel (Romans-only); Joel’s analogous gap is the four locust-name taxonomy	No matching four-stage insect taxonomy	Single escalating descriptive phrase, not four lexemes	#20
Lion (אַרְיֵה, roar out of Zion)	Unfamiliar fauna in traditional highland Hmong experience	Gloss the animal (tsov ntxhuav) explicitly; do NOT substitute the culturally closer tiger, which would alter the specific biblical referent	#40
Valley of Jehoshaphat / Valley of Decision	Symbolic proper-noun place with no real-world referent needed in teaching	Descriptive-symbolic rendering Lub Hav uas Vajtswv Txiav Txim rather than a bare transliteration, with explicit note that this is a symbolic judgment-scene, not a literal ongoing pilgrimage site	#35
Shophar / trumpet	Concrete object, unfamiliar exact instrument but functionally clear	Native functional term raj xyu (horn/trumpet); no collision, comprehension-level only	#25
Threshing-floor/winepress mechanics (implicit in 2:24, 3:13)	Agricultural process differs in detail from Hmong wet-rice cultivation	No separate lexeme created; carried by existing qoob loo / kua txiv hmab / winepress descriptive phrase with a brief process-gloss recommended at first occurrence	#31, #38

Recommendation: none of the above require TM-revision escalation; they are comprehension-level gaps addressed by descriptive paraphrase plus a first-occurrence gloss, per the reading-level convention established in the Romans baseline (§6, 12_ai_translation_requirements.md).

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3. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing

Unlike §2, these are cases where Hmong does have a ready, natural-sounding word — but that word is already “occupied” by a specific traditional-religion referent, so an un-fenced (unqualified) use will default to the wrong meaning. Each entry states the neighbor concept, the fence (disambiguating strategy), and whether the fence is inherited from Romans or newly required by Joel.

3.1 The Outpouring-of-the-Spirit cluster (Yau-ee 2:28-29) — five fences in one unit

Hmong term	Competing occupant of the same semantic space	Fence
nchuav (pour out)	Libation-pouring of liquor to ancestor/nature spirits (txhaws cawv rau dab)	Always co-occur with Vaj Ntsuj Plig as object; explicit note: God pouring Himself out, never a ritual liquid offering given to or by spirits — reverses the direction of the traditional act (here God gives, He is not given to). NEW fence, Joel-specific.
npau suav (dream)	Primary channel of ancestor/spirit communication, normally elder/shaman-interpreted	Always anchor source explicitly to Vaj Ntsuj Plig; never juxtapose with existing dream-interpretation vocabulary without the contrast note. NEW fence, Joel-specific.
yog pom zaj yeeb yaj kiab (vision)	Same class as dreams; shamanic trance-vision	Same anchoring requirement as dreams. NEW fence, Joel-specific.
cev Vajtswv Lus (prophesy)	Shamanic trance-speech, voice attributed to a spirit-guide (txiv neeb practice)	Teaching note distinguishing Spirit-given, doctrinally-accountable proclamation of the one true God from trance channeling; the speaker remains rationally self-aware, unlike shamanic trance. NEW fence, Joel-specific.
qhev / tus qhev poj niam (bondservants)	Residual chattel/debt-slavery connotation (shared with Romans #10)	INHERITED fence from Romans TM servant_slave_doulos: never soften; the doctrinal point (Spirit crosses every social line) depends on retaining full servile force, paired here with a note that the Spirit-gift confers dignity without erasing the term’s weight.

3.2 The Day-of-the-LORD / calendar cluster

Hmong term	Competing occupant	Fence
bare hnub (day)	hnub zoo / hnub phem — the almanac/shaman auspicious-day divination system	Full fixed phrase Hnub Loj thiab Txaus Ntshai ntawm Tus Tswv mandatory at every occurrence, never abbreviated to bare hnub; explicit named contrast with the almanac system required at first occurrence in any lesson. NEW fence, Joel’s single highest-stakes item — see §5 ranking.
tej cim tseem ceeb (wonders/signs)	Natural-omen divination requiring shamanic interpretation and ritual response	Teach as self-interpreting, sovereign divine acts announcing the Day, not raw omens available for independent reading. NEW fence, Joel-specific.

3.3 The repentance/ritual-repair cluster

Hmong term	Competing occupant	Fence
tig rov qab los cuag Vajtswv, hloov siab lees txim (return/repent)	Ritual-technical repair of relationship with offended ancestors/spirits (divination + prescribed offering)	Always taught paired with 2:13’s own rend-the-heart-not-the-garment safeguard (#28); never presented as a technique with guaranteed ritual efficacy. NEW fence, reinforced by the text’s internal structure.
muab kev yoo mov cais ua dawb huv... (sanctify a fast)	dawb huv shares vocabulary with folk ritual-purity from spirit-contamination (INHERITED collision, Romans sanctification entry)	INHERITED fence: teach as consecration/setting-apart for corporate repentance, not a repeatable ritual-cleansing state.
same phrase, pehawm component	Exact verb for venerating ancestral/household spirits (pehawm dab) (INHERITED collision, Romans worship_serve_cultic entry)	INHERITED fence: object always stated, pehawm Vajtswv, never bare.
quaj nyiav, quaj ntsuag (lament/wail)	Existing Hmong funeral public-wailing tradition	Lower risk — positive comprehension bridge, not a competing ritual system; flag register/intensity only, no doctrinal fence required beyond noting the object of grief is covenant unfaithfulness before God, not death of a person.

3.4 The locust-judgment cluster

Hmong term	Competing occupant	Fence
plaub pab kooj... / tub rog loj thiab muaj zog (locusts/locust-army)	Crop failure attributed to offended field/nature spirit, addressed via divination + sacrificial offering	Teach explicitly as tus Tswv’s own commanded instrument of moral judgment (2:11’s “the LORD gives voice before his army”); correct response is repentance toward God, never divination or fij-style appeasement. INHERITED collision class (parallels Romans’ idol/wrath-of-God contrast logic), newly instantiated here.

3.5 The wrath/character cluster

Hmong term	Competing occupant	Fence
implicit wrath in 2:11 (“the Day is great and terrible”); explicit at 3:21 (kuv yuav pauj tej ntshav)	Capricious ancestor/spirit anger, provoked by ritual error, remedied by appeasement (INHERITED collision, Romans wrath_of_god entry)	INHERITED fence: teach as righteous, judicial, purposeful — not appeasable by ritual, not capricious.
muaj txoj kev khuv leej... thiab muaj txiaj ntsim ntau (mercy/grace formula, 2:13)	Risk of flattening mercy (txoj kev khuv leej) and grace (txiaj ntsim) into one term	INHERITED fence from Romans mercy/grace distinction ruling: kept lexically distinct; chesed (covenant-loyal love) flagged as a third nuance requiring its own note so it is not silently absorbed into either.

3.6 Cross-reference note on ntsuj plig

Joel’s outpouring passage never uses the bare anthropological ntsuj plig (human spirit/soul); the only spirit-term present is Vaj Ntsuj Plig (God’s own Spirit). This is fortunate — it means Joel does not independently reintroduce the human-soul/divine-Spirit collision documented in the Romans baseline; the existing Romans fence (mandatory “Vaj” prefix, never applied to human souls) is sufficient and requires no Joel-specific extension. This is noted explicitly so the absence of an issue here is not mistaken for an oversight.

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4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Item	Decision	Rationale
Book name (Joel)	Transliterate: Yau-ee	Parallel treatment to Romans’ Loos; establishes a citation convention (Yau-ee [ch]:[v]) consistent with existing Hmong Bible-tradition proper-name transliteration practice.
Mount Zion / Jerusalem	Transliterate: Roob Xi-oo / Yeluxalees	Already-established Hmong Bible-tradition transliterations; no descriptive paraphrase needed, low risk, high existing recognition among Hmong Christian readers.
Judah	Reuse INHERITED transliteration cov Yudas from Romans TM jew, with a flagged sense-shift note (ethnic/covenant referent in Romans vs. national/territorial referent in Joel)	Preserves TM consistency across the whole Language Package family while flagging the contextual meaning-shift for teaching, per the no-silent-reuse principle.
Egypt / Edom	Transliterate: Iyiv / Edoos	Established or highly probable Hmong Bible-tradition transliterations for these historic nations; proper nouns, comprehension-level only.
Valley of Jehoshaphat / Valley of Decision	Paraphrase (descriptive-symbolic), not transliterate: Lub Hav uas Vajtswv Txiav Txim	The Hebrew proper noun (Jehoshaphat) is not independently meaningful to a Hmong reader and the text’s own parallel naming (“Valley of Decision”) signals the name functions symbolically; a transliterated proper noun alone would obscure this and risk being taught as a real pilgrimage site. Paraphrase preserves the intended symbolic sense.
Shophar (trumpet)	Paraphrase with existing native term: raj xyu, not a transliterated loanword	A functionally equivalent native Hmong instrument-term exists and carries no competing ritual referent; transliteration would be unnecessary opacity, contrary to the Romans-baseline principle (see baptism/hilastērion rulings) that opaque loanwords should be avoided wherever a native term can bear the sense.
The four locust-names (gazam/arbeh/yeleq/chasil)	Paraphrase as a single escalating descriptive phrase, not four transliterated or four separately-coined lexemes	No matching Hmong four-stage insect taxonomy exists; coining four artificial neologisms would produce false precision and reading-level strain disproportionate to the doctrinal payload, which is cumulative totality, not entomological distinction.
”Abba”-style retained loanword	Not applicable / no such item in Joel	Unlike Romans 8:15’s Abba, Leej Txiv, Joel contains no Aramaic or otherwise-untranslatable intimacy-marking loanword requiring retention; this is noted explicitly to confirm the question was considered and correctly resolved as not arising, per full-coverage discipline.
Lion (roar out of Zion, 3:16)	Gloss, do not substitute — retain tsov ntxhuav (lion) with an explanatory note identifying the animal	Substituting the culturally closer tiger would alter the specific biblical zoological referent and its ancient Near Eastern royal/danger connotations; a brief gloss preserves both fidelity and comprehension.
”The Day of the LORD”	Paraphrase (fixed descriptive compound), never a bare transliteration or single-word coinage	A single Hmong word cannot carry the personal-moral-eschatological sense without triggering the hnub zoo/hnub phem collision (see §1.1, §5); the deliberately full phrase is itself the disambiguation strategy.

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5. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × strength of competing traditional-religion referent × frequency/prominence in the book), highest risk first. All items below are Critical or High tier per the risk-tier definitions inherited from the Romans baseline registry metadata.

1. “The Day of the LORD” vs. the hnub zoo/hnub phem almanac-divination day-system (Yau-ee 1:15; 2:1-2, 11, 31; 3:14, 18). Critical. This is Joel’s own structuring category, occurring at the climax of every major section of the book, and the competing Hmong frame (impersonal, calendrical, ritually-manipulable auspicious/inauspicious days) is not a marginal folk belief but an actively consulted, mainstream cultural practice. A single lapse to bare hnub anywhere near this refrain risks converting the book’s entire theological spine into fatalistic calendar-omen language. Highest-priority item in the whole Language Package.

2. The outpouring cluster’s five-fold simultaneous collision — nchuav (libation), npau suav/vision (ancestor-communication channel), cev Vajtswv Lus (shamanic trance-speech), all converging in Yau-ee 2:28-29, the book’s core passage and its most-quoted NT text (Acts 2:17-21). Critical. Unlike single-term collisions elsewhere, this passage’s risk is combinatorial: any one fence dropped in a three-verse span can reframe the entire promise as a spirit-medium phenomenon rather than the sovereign gift of God’s own Spirit.

3. “Call on the name of the LORD” using bare hu (Yau-ee 2:32). Critical. Identical collision to the Romans-baseline hu/soul-calling ruling, but here it sits at the book’s salvation-promise climax and is the direct Hebrew/LXX source for Romans 10:13 — a doctrinal bridge point where Phase 2 content spanning both books must render this identically or the OT/NT link is severed.

4. Locust plague and locust-army as YHWH’s judgment vs. crop-failure spirit-appeasement custom (Yau-ee 1:4-12; 2:2-11, 25). High. The entire causal logic of Hmong agricultural-disaster explanation (offended spirit → divination → ritual offering) runs directly counter to Joel’s claim of purposeful, moral, single-God judgment; without correction, hearers may nod along with the plague narrative while mentally supplying the wrong causal mechanism throughout chapters 1-2.

5. tig rov qab (repentance) without the 2:13 heart/garment safeguard attached (Yau-ee 2:12-13). High. Risk of the whole repentance appeal being absorbed into a ritual-repair technique unless deliberately paired every time with the text’s own anti-ritualism verse.

6. nchuav (pour out) isolated from its object and doctrine — even outside the combinatorial risk of item 2, nchuav alone, used loosely in a summary or quiz answer without Vaj Ntsuj Plig immediately attached, reactivates the libation-to-spirits frame. High as a standalone risk in addition to its role within item 2.

7. qhev/bondservant softened for readability (Yau-ee 2:29). High. Any temptation to substitute a gentler word (e.g., “worker” or “helper”) to avoid the discomfort of slavery vocabulary directly undercuts the doctrinal point that the Spirit’s outpouring crosses the most extreme social-status line in the ancient world; this mirrors the Romans-baseline doulos ruling and must be enforced identically here.

8. fij-adjacent agrarian judgment/blessing wordplay dropped (Yau-ee 2:19-24 vs. 3:13). Medium-High. Not a traditional-religion collision per se, but a structural-literary risk: if the deliberate reuse of harvest/winepress vocabulary across blessing and judgment contexts is not flagged, Joel’s central positive/negative reversal structure — arguably the book’s main literary-theological device — becomes invisible to Hmong readers.

9. Wrath-of-God vindication language at the book’s close (Yau-ee 3:21) read as capricious spirit-anger. High, inherited collision class from Romans, newly instantiated at Joel’s climactic final verse; risk is elevated here because it is the very last theological statement of the book and thus shapes the reader’s final impression of God’s character alongside the mercy formula of 2:13.

10. Dreams/visions (Yau-ee 2:28) treated as generically parallel to prophecy rather than flagged for their specific ancestor-communication collision. High. Distinguished from item 2 above because this risk can also arise in isolated citation/quiz use of just the dream/vision clause without the full outpouring-unit teaching note; flagged separately to ensure Phase 2 content referencing 2:28 alone (e.g., a devotional on dreams) still carries the fence.

11. “Nations” (Yau-ee 3:2, 9, 12) read as identical in doctrinal function to Romans’ missional “Gentiles.” Medium, register/context-shift risk rather than a traditional-religion collision — included here because silent identical reuse of lwm Haiv Neeg across both books without a context-shift note could produce confused cross-book doctrine (judgment-object here vs. gospel-recipient there).

12. Valley of Jehoshaphat taught as a literal ongoing site rather than a symbolic judgment-scene. Medium. Lower risk than the above but flagged because Hmong readers, accustomed to naming specific ancestral/spirit-associated geographic sites for ritual purposes, may default to treating any named “valley” as a literal, currently-significant location unless explicitly corrected.

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6. Cross-Book Consistency Notes

All INHERITED terms in this analysis (Vajtswv, tus Tswv, Vaj Ntsuj Plig, lub cev nqaij tawv, qhev, kev cawm dim/cawm, cov seem, tus ua haujlwm pab Vajtswv, lwm Haiv Neeg, cov Yudas, dawb huv, pehawm, and the mercy/grace distinction) are reused character-for-character from the Romans Hmong TM baseline with no deviation, per the Phase 2 enforcement rule that Critical/High risk_level terms may never receive an alternate rendering without formal TM-revision review. Every context-shift (e.g., lwm Haiv Neeg as judgment-object rather than missionary-object; cov Yudas as national/territorial rather than ethnic-covenant referent) is flagged in the relevant teaching note rather than silently passed through, consistent with the full-book-coverage and no-silent-omission mandates governing this Language Package.

No chapter of Joel (1, 2, or 3) was found to be doctrinally thin or vocabulary-empty; all three chapters are represented in this analysis, consistent with the coverage confirmation already logged in analysis/08_core_glossary.md.

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7. Recommendations Feeding Phase 2

1. Promote Hnub Loj thiab Txaus Ntshai ntawm Tus Tswv to a TM-locked fixed collocation with the same non-negotiable status as Vaj Ntsuj Plig and Vajtswv hwjchim in the Romans baseline — this is the single most important lexical decision in the Joel package.
2. Require the combined five-part teaching note for Yau-ee 2:28-29 to travel as one atomic unit in all Phase 2 generation (lesson, footnote, quiz, summary), never split across separate outputs that might drop one of the five fences.
3. Extend the Romans-baseline hu-qualification rule explicitly to Yau-ee 2:32 as its Old Testament source-text instance, with mandatory forward cross-reference to Romans 10:13.
4. Log all “NEW” (not-yet-ratified) terms from analysis/08_core_glossary.md for formal TM-revision review before Phase 2 publication, per the [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED] convention already governing this pipeline.
5. Carry forward the judgment/blessing agrarian-vocabulary identity requirement (§1.5, §5 item 8) as an explicit structural-consistency check in the Phase 2 validation checklist.