Linguistic Gap Analysis
Ruth — Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package, extends Romans Baseline v1.0)
Governing rule: This document never contradicts assets/translation_memory.json (Romans baseline) or the Ruth-specific analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json. Every recommendation below is a strategy layered onto those fixed/proposed renderings, not a replacement for them. Terms already reused exactly from the Romans TM (Section A of the core glossary) are treated here as settled; this analysis concentrates on the NEW Ruth-specific vocabulary (Section B/D of the prior outputs) where the actual gap risk lives.
0. Purpose and Method
Phase 1 Step 8 asks four questions of the Ruth vocabulary set surfaced in Steps 6-7:
- For each of the six assigned doctrines, what Hmong vocabulary is actually available, where does it fall short of the Hebrew/Greek concept, and what compensating strategy closes the gap without inventing a doctrinally unsafe new word?
- Where is Hmong missing vocabulary entirely (a genuine lexical hole), versus where is Hmong overcrowded — i.e., the natural-sounding word already carries a competing traditional-religion referent (animism, shamanism, ancestor-oath, fate) that must be fenced off rather than simply adopted?
- For proper names, ritual customs, and culturally opaque legal institutions, should the strategy be transliteration (with footnote) or descriptive paraphrase — and why?
- Taken across the whole letter, which single ambiguities carry the most doctrinal weight if mishandled, ranked, so Phase 2 generation and human-theologian review can prioritize attention?
Method: every entry below is cross-referenced to its bible_term_registry.json (Ruth) id and, where relevant, to the corresponding Romans baseline TM entry it borrows from or must be fenced against.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
| Doctrine | Available Hmong Terms | Weaknesses in Available Terms | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Hesed (Covenant Loving-kindness) | kev hlub (love, reg. #8, Low risk); txoj kev khuv leej (mercy, reg. #5, Medium); lus cog tseg (promise/covenant pledge, reg. #38, Low); koob hmoov (ordinary blessing, reg. #31, Medium — sanctioned narrow use only) | No single native Hmong word carries chesed’s full triple range (affection + steadfastness + covenant obligation). kev hlub alone loses the obligation dimension entirely (sounds like ordinary affection, could describe any warm relationship). txoj kev khuv leej captures compassion toward the miserable but not loyalty toward the undeserving-but-covenanted. koob hmoov is permanently fenced off (fate/fortune collision, per Romans baseline). | Retain the compound coinage txoj kev hlub ruaj khov raws li lo lus cog tseg (reg. #4) as the single fixed Critical-tier rendering for the doctrine’s technical occurrences (1:8; 2:20; 3:10). Use kev hlub alone only for Ruth’s human affection toward Naomi (4:15, reg. #8) as a supporting fruit-of-hesed reference, explicitly taught as narrower than the full doctrine term. Never let txoj kev khuv leej stand in as a full substitute for the doctrine — pair the two terms in teaching notes so learners see mercy as one strand within the larger hesed cord. |
| 2. The Kinsman-Redeemer | kev txhiv (redemption, reg. #14, Medium — baseline reuse); tus kwvtij (ordinary kinsman, reg. #15, Low); tus qub txeeg qub teg (heir, reg. #32, Low); tus timkhawv (witness, reg. #18, Low) | Hmong has rich clan-inheritance vocabulary but no single existing lexeme fuses “near-kinsman” with “legal duty/right to redeem,” because the Israelite go’el institution (land-redemption + person-redemption + levirate marriage bundled into one office) has no exact Hmong institutional parallel, even though clan-widow-remarriage custom is structurally similar. Bare kwvtij under-marks the legal-technical sense; bare kev txhiv over-generalizes (sounds like any act of buying something back). | Retain the coined technical phrase tus kwvtij uas muaj cai thiab luag num txhiv (reg. #13) exclusively for go’el’s formally activated legal sense (ch. 3-4), reserving plain tus kwvtij (reg. #15) for the informal ch. 2 preview mention of Boaz. Mandatory phonological caution: confirm in read-aloud review that kwvtij produces zero aural confusion with txiv neeb (shaman) in any regional Hmong dialect pronunciation — this is a orthographically unrelated pair but the doctrine’s entire dignity depends on zero confusion in oral delivery. |
| 3. God’s Providence in Ordinary Life | Vajtswv hwjchim (mandatory-qualified divine power, reg. #23, High — baseline reuse); Vajtswv uas muaj Hwjchim Loj Kawg Nkaus (Shaddai, reg. #3, High); neutral descriptive phrasing for miqreh/“chance” (reg. #22, Critical) | The single greatest gap: Hmong’s most natural word-family for “it happened that / by chance” overlaps directly with hmoov (impersonal fate/fortune assigned by ancestors/spirits), which the Romans baseline permanently forbids for personal divine action. Ruth 2:3 is the mirror-image problem of Romans 9: the Hebrew/Greek text itself uses surface “chance” language, but the theological point is the opposite of chance. There is no ready-made Hmong idiom that is simultaneously (a) natural-sounding as “happened to,” and (b) free of fatalistic connotation. | Use a deliberately neutral, non-idiomatic descriptive verb phrase (e.g., “nws txawm tuaj cuag tau…”) rather than reaching for any existing “luck/chance” idiom, and attach a mandatory narrator’s-irony teaching note at 2:3 explaining that the text’s own surface language of “happening” is later revealed (2:20’s hesed-praise, 4:14’s crowd-acclamation) to have been God’s unseen guidance throughout. This is the same fencing discipline the Romans baseline already applies to hmoov in Doctrine 6 (Election) — Ruth simply requires it applied from the opposite narrative direction (apparent randomness turning out to be providence, rather than personal choice being mistaken for fate). |
| 4. The Inclusion of Gentiles in God’s Redemptive Plan | Vajtswv (God, reg. #1, Low); dab mlom (idol, reg. #28, High — baseline reuse); koj haiv neeg yuav yog kuv haiv neeg (people-clause, reg. #11, Medium); tus poj niam txawv teb chaws (foreigner, reg. #27, Medium) | The people-clause borrows the neutral noun-root “haiv neeg” but has no existing fixed idiom for a total ethnic-religious re-identification vow — Hmong clan-adoption customs (a real positive bridge) describe changing clan/lineage affiliation but do not carry an equivalent for changing one’s deity allegiance in the same breath. The God-clause is lexically simple (Vajtswv is already Low-risk) but doctrinally the heaviest clause in the whole book. | Keep the two clauses of the core passage (1:16) grammatically parallel and rendered back-to-back as a single indivisible confession, never split across separate sentences or lessons, so the people-change and the God-change read as one unified conversion act, not two loosely related statements. Pair with dab mlom background-teaching (what Ruth is renouncing) so the confession’s exclusivity is not lost. Explicitly distinguish from the ordinary clan-adoption bridge-custom: note in teaching that clan-adoption changes lineage but not deity-allegiance, whereas Ruth’s vow changes both simultaneously — this is the doctrinal surplus that must not be flattened. |
| 5. Loyalty and Faithfulness | nrog nkaus / tuav ruaj (cling/hold fast, reg. #10, Low); rov qab (return/turn back, reg. #36, Low); thov kom tus Tswv ua li ntawd rau kuv, thiab tseem ntxiv dua li ntawd rau kuv (oath formula, reg. #9, Critical) | The physical-clinging vocabulary and the “return” keyword are both lexically safe and stable. The real gap is the self-imprecatory oath formula naming YHWH as enforcer — Hmong customary oath/curse formulas invoking ancestors or spirits as guarantors are a live cultural practice, and no existing Christian-Hmong liturgical convention has yet fixed a rendering for this specific ANE legal-oath genre. | Preserve the oath’s structure (self-curse naming a divine enforcer) literally, but anchor tus Tswv immediately and explicitly as Israel’s covenant God (never a generic spirit-invocation), and attach a mandatory contrast-teaching note: Ruth is not adding a Hebrew oath-god alongside her Moabite ones, she is replacing the entire framework of spirit-enforced vows with a single, personal, covenant-naming oath to YHWH alone. This mirrors the Romans baseline’s pehawm-replacement-not-addition convention (worship_serve_cultic entry) applied here to oath-vocabulary instead of worship-vocabulary. |
| 6. Genealogy Pointing to David and Christ | tus qub txeeg qub teg (heir, reg. #32, Low); genealogical formula + transliterated proper names (reg. #33, Medium); Npe-lehees (Bethlehem, reg. #34, Low-Medium) | No doctrinal-collision gap here — the risk is purely comprehension and teaching-emphasis. Hmong has no existing standardized transliteration confirmed for Obed/Jesse/Boaz/Perez in this specific Ruth context, and without an explicit forward link to Matthew 1:1, the genealogy’s climactic function (the whole book’s destination) reads as a flat list of unfamiliar foreign names. | Confirm and reuse whatever standard transliterations already exist in the established Hmong Old Testament tradition (Vaj Lug Kub Npaiv Npaum) for these five names before finalizing Phase 2 content — do not invent new transliterations independently. Attach a mandatory Matthew 1:1 cross-reference note at 4:17-22 as a non-negotiable teaching element, since this is the doctrine’s entire payoff and the one place in Ruth where a missing footnote silently erases a whole doctrine rather than merely weakening it. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
Two distinct kinds of gap recur throughout Ruth, and Phase 2 generation must handle them with different tools.
2.1 Genuine Missing-Vocabulary Gaps (comprehension gap, no collision)
These are referents Hmong simply has no native word for, because the underlying custom/institution does not exist in Hmong culture. The correct tool is descriptive paraphrase + mandatory footnote, never invented neologism presented as a “translation.”
| Gap | Registry ref | Why missing | Tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sandal-removal legal ratification custom | #16 | No Hmong legal-ceremonial equivalent for waiving a redemption-right via footwear | Literal description + footnote explaining ancient Israelite legal custom |
| Levirate marriage’s specific “raise up the name of the dead” purpose clause | #17 | Hmong clan-widow-remarriage custom is a partial structural analogy (real, but not identical — preserves lineage, not specifically “the dead man’s name”) | Descriptive rendering + teaching note distinguishing partial-bridge from full-equivalence |
| Gleaning law as Mosaic legal provision | #25 | No codified Hmong legal right to glean; communal harvest-sharing exists informally but not as statute | Descriptive phrase + brief Mosaic-law explanatory note |
| Town-gate legal-transaction setting (4:1-11) | (supports #13, #18) | Hmong dispute-resolution customs exist (clan elders, village leaders) but the specific “city gate as courthouse” institution is unfamiliar | Descriptive scene-setting, not literal architectural transliteration |
| Olive-adjacent agrarian metaphors — N/A for Ruth (carried over caution from Romans baseline, noting Ruth’s own agrarian imagery — barley/wheat harvest, threshing floor — is by contrast highly Hmong-accessible) | — | Confirms Ruth’s harvest setting is a strength, not a gap, relative to Romans’ olive-tree problem | No special tool needed; flag as a positive cross-book note for future harvest-imagery lessons |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (existing word, but occupied by a competing referent — fencing required)
These are the higher-stakes cases: a natural, fluent-sounding Hmong word already exists, but it is already “occupied” by a traditional-religion, shamanic, or fate-based referent. The correct tool is mandatory qualifier phrase + explicit contrast-teaching, following the exact discipline already established in the Romans baseline for hwjchim, Txoj Kevcai, pehawm, and ncaj ncees.
| Neighborhood | Competing occupant | Ruth term needing fencing | Fencing strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fate/luck/chance vocabulary | hmoov (impersonal fate/fortune, ancestor/spirit-assigned) | Miqreh / “she happened to come” (#22) | Avoid the hmoov word-family entirely; use neutral descriptive phrasing; mandatory narrator’s-irony teaching note (see §1, Doctrine 3 above). This is the single most dangerous neighborhood in the whole book. |
| Ritual/spiritual power vocabulary | shamanic (txiv neeb) ritual power, bare hwjchim | Shaddai / “the Almighty” (#3); Power (divine) (#23) | Never allow bare hwjchim; always the compound Vajtswv uas muaj Hwjchim Loj Kawg Nkaus / Vajtswv hwjchim, reusing the Romans baseline’s mandatory-qualifier discipline exactly. |
| Salvific/soteriological favor vocabulary | txiaj ntsim (Critical-locked, Romans baseline, unmerited salvific grace) | Chen / “find favor” (#7) | Permanently forbid txiaj ntsim for Ruth 2:2, 2:10, 2:13; use the distinct compound kev tau txais kev hlub tshua; teach explicitly as an ordinary ANE social petition idiom, not a soteriological event. This is a direct lexical collision (the LXX itself uses the identical Greek word χάρις for both), making it the book’s clearest inherited guard-rail case. |
| Blessing/fortune vocabulary | koob hmoov (sanctioned narrow carve-out for ordinary material blessing only, per Romans baseline) | Blessing formula at the wedding (4:11-12, reg. #31) | Correct use-case, but must be actively fenced away from both Hesed (#4) and Grace (#6) in teaching — do not let this correct instance become a gateway for reintroducing koob hmoov into hesed or grace contexts elsewhere in the curriculum. |
| Oath/curse-before-a-divine-enforcer vocabulary | customary Hmong spirit-invoked oath/curse formulas | Oath formula “May the LORD do so to me…” (#9) | Preserve the self-curse structure but anchor exclusively and explicitly to tus Tswv as Israel’s covenant God; teach as replacement, not supplementation, of any spirit-invocation oath framework (mirrors pehawm’s replacement-not-addition convention). |
| Kinship-role vocabulary near a homophone-adjacent shamanic term | txiv neeb (shaman) — phonetically adjacent, not etymologically related, to kwvtij (kinsman) | Kinsman-Redeemer (#13, #15) | Not a true semantic collision (unrelated meanings), but a register/production-clarity risk flagged for oral-delivery review: confirm clear enunciation and, where helpful in spoken-curriculum contexts, avoid placing kwvtij-based phrases immediately adjacent to any incidental spiritual-power vocabulary that could produce a momentary mishearing. |
| Ritual purification/cleansing vocabulary | dawb huv (ritual purity from spirit-contamination, Romans baseline High-risk entry) | Not directly present in Ruth’s text, but relevant guard-rail: the threshing-floor scene (#19) and sandal-removal custom (#16) must NOT be described using dawb huv-family purification vocabulary, since neither scene is a purification rite | Explicitly avoid importing dawb huv vocabulary into either scene’s description; keep both as legal/covenantal, not ritual-cleansing, in register. |
| Possession/spirit-indwelling vocabulary | dab / nkag (spirit, and the verb for spirit-possession — already forbidden by Romans baseline for “sin entered the world”) | Naomi’s lament over Shaddai’s dealings (1:20-21) and any future teaching describing hardship as affliction | Do not describe Naomi’s suffering using dab-adjacent affliction vocabulary (which would suggest spirit-affliction/curse rather than providential testing); keep the lament in plain lament-vocabulary, anchored to the Shaddai title’s proper qualified form. |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
Ruth is unusually dense with proper names (persons and places) and with named legal/cultural customs that have no Hmong equivalent institution. The following decision framework governs each case, consistent with the baseline’s abba_father and Aramaic-loanword precedent (retain + gloss, never drop).
3.1 Decision Rule
- Transliterate + mandatory first-occurrence footnote when the item is a proper name (person/place) whose meaning carries narrative or theological weight (e.g., name-puns, ironic place-names, genealogical climax names).
- Paraphrase descriptively + mandatory explanatory note when the item is a custom or institution with no Hmong equivalent, where a bare transliteration would be opaque noise rather than meaningful information (e.g., “goel,” “kanaph,” sandal-removal).
- Never transliterate a theological/doctrinal-load-bearing common noun (hesed, go’el, chen) — these must always receive a constructed Hmong descriptive compound per §1 above, because a bare loanword would be doctrinally inert and would forfeit the very contrast-teaching the curriculum depends on (same principle the Romans baseline applied in rejecting a transliterated loanword for
hilastērionand forbaptizō).
3.2 Proper Names — Transliteration Table
| English Name | Hebrew | Proposed Hmong Transliteration | Footnote Required? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ruth | Rut | Lus (pending confirmation against existing Hmong OT standard) | No (name itself is not a pun) | [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED: confirm against Vaj Lug Kub Npaiv Npaum standard spelling before Phase 2 lock-in] |
| Naomi | No’omi | Nau-au-mi | Yes — “my pleasantness,” set up against Mara | Reg. #35; footnote required at first occurrence (1:2) and reactivated at the 1:20 name-change |
| Mara | Mara | Mala | Yes — “bitter” | Reg. #35; must be footnoted at 1:20, cross-referenced back to Naomi’s meaning |
| Orpah | Orpah | Auj-pa (pending confirmation) | No | Minor character; no name-pun load-bearing for doctrine |
| Elimelech | Elimelekh | Elimelej (pending confirmation) | Optional — “my God is king” is thematically resonant but not doctrinally load-bearing | Low priority |
| Mahlon / Chilion | Machlon / Kilyon | Malohaus / Khilis (pending confirmation) | No | Minor; sons who die, establishing the widow-crisis |
| Boaz | Bo’az | Npau-a (pending confirmation) | Optional — name possibly means “in him is strength,” thematically resonant with Doctrine 2 | Confirm against standard before deciding on footnote |
| Bethlehem | Beit Lechem | Npe-lehees | Yes — “house of bread,” ironic against the famine (1:1) and Christological birthplace (Doctrine 6) | Reg. #34; footnote mandatory at both 1:1 and 4:11 recurrence |
| Moab | Mo’av | Mau-am (pending confirmation) | Optional — background note on Moabite-Israelite history (Deut 23:3-6) recommended, not strictly a name-pun footnote | Supports Doctrine 4 teaching |
| Obed | Oved | Auved (pending confirmation) | Yes — the genealogical climax name; cross-reference to Matthew 1:1 is mandatory | Reg. #33; single highest-priority proper-name footnote in the book for Doctrine 6 |
| Jesse | Yishai | Yexi (pending confirmation) | Optional — reinforces the Davidic-line climax | Supports Doctrine 6 |
| David | David | Davi (already standard in Hmong Christian usage) | No — already familiar | Confirm existing standard spelling is retained unchanged |
| Perez / Tamar (4:12 blessing reference) | Perets / Tamar | Pales / Themaj (pending confirmation) | Optional — background note on the Perez-Tamar precedent (Gen 38) strengthens the levirate-marriage typology | Supports Doctrine 2 and Doctrine 6 |
Escalation note: every “(pending confirmation)” entry above must be checked against the existing Hmong Old Testament translation tradition (Vaj Lug Kub Npaiv Npaum / HWB) before Phase 2 lock-in. Inventing a new transliteration independently of that existing tradition would fracture consistency with whatever OT curriculum content already exists in Hmong and must not happen without native-speaker/theologian review, per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md §9’s “genuinely new term” escalation trigger (proper names function analogously here even though they are not doctrinal vocabulary).
3.3 Customs/Institutions — Paraphrase Table
| Item | Registry ref | Transliterate or Paraphrase? | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go’el (kinsman-redeemer office) | #13 | Paraphrase (constructed compound) | Doctrinal common noun — must never be a bare loanword; see §3.1 rule |
| Sandal-removal ratification | #16 | Paraphrase + footnote | Purely comprehension gap; transliterating “na’al” would be meaningless noise |
| Threshing floor scene | #19 | Paraphrase + mandatory propriety-affirming footnote | Register/propriety risk requires explanatory framing, not a loanword |
| Garment-corner gesture | #20 | Paraphrase + footnote linking back to “wings” (2:12) | Wordplay (kanaph) must be preserved through consistent descriptive imagery, not through a single transliterated technical term |
| Gleaning law | #25 | Paraphrase + brief Mosaic-law note | Legal-institutional gap, not a name |
| Levirate “raise up the name” clause | #17 | Paraphrase | Doctrinally loaded phrase, not a proper noun; must remain descriptive Hmong, never a Hebrew loanword |
| Oath formula | #9 | Paraphrase (structure preserved, not transliterated) | Doctrinal load-bearing; a transliterated Hebrew oath-formula would be opaque and would forfeit the contrast-teaching against Hmong customary oaths |
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined doctrinal weight × collision severity × likelihood of silent mishandling in Phase 2 generation. Ties broken toward whichever ambiguity is most likely to be encountered repeatedly across the book (higher occurrence-density = higher aggregate risk even if any single instance is manageable).
| Rank | Ambiguity | Registry ref | Doctrine(s) | Why Highest-Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Miqreh / “she happened to come” — chance-vocabulary vs. hmoov-family fate vocabulary | #22 | 3 (Providence) | Inverse of the Romans baseline’s already-hardest problem (election vs. fate): here the text itself uses chance-language, and an unreflective translator could reach for the single most natural, fluent Hmong idiom for “as it happened” — which is precisely the forbidden hmoov family — with the narrative’s central irony (apparent chance = actual providence) silently destroyed and no error message anywhere in the pipeline to catch it, since it “reads naturally.” |
| 2 | Chen / “find favor” — direct χάρις lexical collision with salvific grace | #7 (guard-rail #6) | 1 (Hesed, boundary), 3 (Providence, boundary) | The LXX’s own word is identical to the Critical-locked grace term; any Phase 2 generation process not specifically trained on this Ruth-only guard-rail could default to reusing the familiar, already-memorized txiaj ntsim from the Romans baseline precisely because it is the “correct” TM answer for χάρις everywhere else in the corpus — creating a systemic risk unique to cross-book TM reuse. |
| 3 | Oath formula naming YHWH as self-curse enforcer | #9 | 1 (Hesed), 5 (Loyalty) | Sits at the core passage (1:17) itself; any softening, omission, or unmarked resemblance to a Hmong customary spirit-invoked curse would corrupt the single most theologically dense verse assigned to this entire curriculum. |
| 4 | ”Your God, my God” conversion clause | #12 | 4 (Gentile Inclusion), 1 (Hesed) | Also core passage (1:16); lexically simple (Vajtswv is Low-risk) but the single highest doctrinal-weight clause in the book — a flattening into a merely social statement (rather than exclusive religious re-allegiance) is an easy, low-visibility error since nothing in the sentence’s grammar forces the exclusivity reading in Hmong the way it does in Hebrew. |
| 5 | Hesed compound term drift toward kev hlub alone or koob hmoov | #4 | 1 (Hesed) — anchor doctrine of the whole curriculum | The coined compound is long and may tempt simplification in space-constrained contexts (quiz options, headers) exactly as the Romans baseline warns against for its own qualifier-phrases; because this term recurs at three separate structural high points (1:8, 2:20, 3:10), a drift introduced early compounds across the whole curriculum. |
| 6 | Kinsman-Redeemer technical phrase vs. ordinary kwvtij, plus phonological proximity caution re: txiv neeb | #13, #15 | 2 (Kinsman-Redeemer) — named curriculum doctrine | Two-part risk: doctrinal (technical/ordinary sense collapse) and production/oral-delivery (unrelated but phonetically adjacent shamanic term); a named curriculum doctrine failing due to either half of this risk is a significant Phase 2 quality failure. |
| 7 | Shaddai / bare hwjchim risk in Naomi’s lament | #3, #23 | 3 (Providence) | Naomi’s lament is emotionally raw and blame-laden — exactly the register where a generation process might reach for vivid, punchy vocabulary and drop the mandatory qualifier for brevity/impact, producing an accidental shamanic-power reading at the story’s bleakest emotional point. |
| 8 | Garment-corner (kanaph) marriage-proposal gesture and its wordplay link to “wings” | #20, #21 | 2 (Kinsman-Redeemer), 3 (Providence) | If the 2:12/3:9 wordplay link is not preserved, the threshing-floor scene reads as a bare, potentially scandalous-sounding proposal gesture disconnected from its theological set-up (Boaz becoming, in human form, the divine shelter he blessed her to find) — a comprehension failure that becomes a propriety failure. |
| 9 | Genealogy’s proper-name transliterations and the mandatory Matthew 1:1 cross-reference | #33 | 6 (Genealogy) — doctrinal climax | Not a collision risk, but an omission risk: if the cross-reference note is silently dropped (e.g., in a shortened lesson), Doctrine 6’s entire payoff — the reason Ruth is canonically significant at all — disappears without any lexical error being detectable in the text itself. |
| 10 | Death/burial vow (1:17) and Hmong clan-burial cultural weight | reg. #37 (TM death, cultural-weight note) | 5 (Loyalty) | Lexically Low-risk and inherited unchanged from the Romans baseline, but culturally under-weighted if translated flatly: Hmong funeral/clan-burial practice makes Ruth’s forfeiture of burial-reunion with her own ancestors a far heavier vow in a Hmong hearing than a Western one, and Phase 2 content that doesn’t surface this elevated weight undersells the vow’s true cost. |
5. Recommendations for Phase 2 Generation
- Lock the five Critical-tier Ruth-specific coinages (Hesed compound #4, Miqreh-neutral phrasing #22, Chen/favor compound #7, Oath formula #9, plus the guard-rail reuse of Grace #6) into the Phase 2 TM with the same “no re-gloss without TM-revision” enforcement already governing Romans Critical terms, per
12_ai_translation_requirements.md§2. - Do not resolve any
[TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED]flag inherited from08_core_glossary.mdorbible_term_registry.jsonduring Phase 2 generation; escalate per the existing Romans-baseline escalation table (§9) rather than guessing at proper-name transliterations or propriety-sensitive phrasing. - Cross-train generation prompts specifically against Rank #2 (the χάρις/chen collision) — this is the single highest systemic risk precisely because it is invisible to a process trained primarily on the Romans TM, where
txiaj ntsimis always correct for χάρις. Ruth is the one context in this whole two-book corpus where that reflex must be overridden. - Attach mandatory teaching notes, not lexical fixes, for Ranks #3, #4, #7, #8, #9, #10 — these are risks of omission (dropped footnote, dropped contrast-teaching, dropped cross-reference) rather than risks of a wrong word choice, and the Phase 2 validation checklist should include an explicit per-lesson check for the presence of each required note, mirroring the Romans baseline’s qualifier-phrase structural checks.
- Confirm all proper-name transliterations against the existing Hmong Old Testament tradition before Phase 2 lock-in (§3.2); this is a native-speaker/theologian task, not a default-generation task.
- Preserve the
rov qab(“return”) repetition pattern (reg. #36) consistently across chapter 1’s translation without stylistic variation, so the structural keyword-density of the Hebrew original remains perceptible in Hmong — a minor but real fidelity requirement distinct from all doctrinal-risk items above.
6. Cross-Reference Index
| Doctrine # | Doctrine Name | Primary registry refs | Primary ranked risks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hesed (Covenant Loving-kindness) | #4, #5, #8, #9, #31 | Rank 3, Rank 5 |
| 2 | The Kinsman-Redeemer | #13, #14, #15, #16, #18, #20 | Rank 6, Rank 8 |
| 3 | God’s Providence in Ordinary Life | #3, #21, #22, #23, #24, #25 | Rank 1, Rank 7 |
| 4 | The Inclusion of Gentiles in God’s Redemptive Plan | #1, #11, #12, #26, #27, #28 | Rank 4 |
| 5 | Loyalty and Faithfulness | #9, #10, #36, #37 | Rank 3, Rank 10 |
| 6 | Genealogy Pointing to David and Christ | #32, #33, #34 | Rank 9 |
This document, together with analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json, constitutes the complete Phase 1 linguistic-gap deliverable for the Hmong Ruth Language Package and is designed to be extended — never silently overridden — by the Phase 2 doctrine-risk registry and AI translation requirements documents that follow.