Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis — Titus (English → Japanese)
Purpose and Scope
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Titus curriculum. It identifies where standard modern Japanese lacks adequate vocabulary for Titus’s theological content (missing vocabulary), where the available vocabulary is already occupied by competing secular or religious meanings (crowded semantic neighborhoods requiring fencing), where transliteration is preferable to paraphrase (and vice versa), and ranks the letter’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 translator attention. It extends, and does not contradict, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json, and is consistent with 08_core_glossary.md and the Titus extension to bible_term_registry.json already produced for this curriculum. Full-book coverage: this analysis addresses vocabulary drawn from Titus 1–3 in its entirety, with the core passage (2:11–3:8) as theological anchor rather than scope boundary.
Part 1: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the seven curriculum doctrines: the available Japanese term(s), their weaknesses (semantic collision, dilution, or biblical-illiteracy blankness), and the recommended translation strategy.
1. Grace That Trains for Godly Living
| Available Japanese Term(s) | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 恵み (grace) [REUSED] | On-giri (恩・義理) reciprocal-obligation risk — grace read as a favor incurring a repayment debt. Acute in Titus because 2:11–12 makes grace the grammatical subject that acts upon the believer, which if mishandled could read as a superior conferring a favor that obligates the inferior’s “training” as repayment. | Retain 恵み exactly per baseline. Every occurrence in 2:11–12 and the 3:5–7 works-contrast must carry an explicit non-transactional gloss in teaching notes: grace produces training, not a training-debt owed back to God. |
| 訓練する (paideuō, “trains”) [NEW, Critical] | No existing Japanese theological compound for “grace as trainer.” The natural candidate verbs cluster around self-effort training paradigms: 修行 (ascetic religious training), 根性論 (spartan grit-discipline culture pervasive in Japanese sports/military/corporate contexts), 鍛錬 (forging/tempering discipline). All three default to the trainee’s own willpower as the active force — precisely backwards from Titus 2:12’s grammar, where grace itself is the subject. | Use 訓練する but require grace (恵み) to remain the explicit, visible grammatical subject in every rendering (“恵みが…訓練する,” not a passive or agentless construction). Flag for theologian review if any draft segment allows the verb to float free of its stated subject. |
| 不敬虔 (ungodliness), 世的な欲望 (worldly desires), 敬虔 (godliness) [NEW, Medium] | Formal Sino-Japanese compounds with no secular-life footprint for most readers — a blankness/biblical-illiteracy gap rather than a false-concept collision. | Provide first-use plain-language glosses (e.g., “神を無視して生きること” for 不敬虔) alongside the formal term so the formal vocabulary is anchored before being used unglossed later in the same lesson. |
Gap summary: The doctrine’s core theological move — grace as an active former of character, not merely a forgiver of debt — has no ready-made Japanese vocabulary. This is a missing-vocabulary gap requiring constructed, subject-explicit phrasing rather than a single-word fix.
2. Qualifications for Elders
| Available Japanese Term(s) | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 長老 (elder) [NEW, High] | Crowded neighborhood: Japan’s elder-respect culture (敬老) supplies a strong positive association but the wrong basis — 長老 in ordinary usage honors age and social seniority, not examined character and doctrinal qualification. Readers may assume any senior member qualifies. | Retain 長老 (matches Shinkaiyaku convention) but every occurrence in Titus 1:5–9 must be immediately paired with the qualification list, foregrounding “examined for these specific character marks” over “respected for age.” |
| 監督 (overseer) [NEW, Medium-High] | Crowded, diluted: 監督 is everyday vocabulary for a film director, sports team manager, or worksite supervisor. Purely secular administrative-function connotation dominates. | Retain 監督 per glossary but explicitly teach it as the same office as 長老, described by function — pairing the two terms in the same breath resolves both the dilution risk and the age-honorific risk simultaneously. |
| 年配の男性・女性 (older man/woman, πρεσβύτης) [NEW, Medium] | Risk is not collision but conflation with 長老 — English “elder” translations sometimes blur the two Greek words (πρεσβύτερος vs. πρεσβύτης). Japanese has the resources to keep them distinct but only if translators are alert to the Greek difference. | Use a clearly different rendering (年配の男性・女性) from 長老 at every occurrence, and flag any draft that uses 長老 for the chapter 2 age-cohort references. |
| 責められるところのない (above reproach) [NEW, Medium] | Risk of drifting into a vague aspirational-virtue phrase rather than a real, examinable public-reputation standard. | Anchor with concrete examples from the immediate list (1:6–7) each time it is introduced. |
Gap summary: No single missing-word problem here; the risk is entirely in a crowded neighborhood where two correct but adjacent Japanese terms (長老 / 監督) each import an unwanted default association (age-honorific / secular-supervisory) that must be actively fenced against.
3. Sound Doctrine and Good Works
| Available Japanese Term(s) | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 健全な教え (sound doctrine) [NEW, High] | Crowded, diluted: 健全 is default modern vocabulary for healthy finances, sound corporate management, or “wholesome” entertainment ratings (健全なコンテンツ). The medical metaphor is a genuine bridge but risks landing as “moderate, non-extreme” rather than “consistent with apostolic truth.” | Retain 健全な教え but require first-use teaching that explicitly restores the medical metaphor’s doctrinal edge: teaching that is either health-giving (true, life-sustaining) or disease-causing (false, corrupting) — not a spectrum of moderation. |
| 行い (good works) [NEW, Critical] | This is the letter’s most acute crowded-neighborhood problem. The natural competing Sino-Japanese term for “works/deeds,” 業 (gō/waza), is the standing Japanese word for Buddhist karma (as in 自業自得, “as one sows, so one reaps”). Using 業 anywhere in Titus’s works-vocabulary would silently import a cause-and-effect merit framework — catastrophic at 3:5, the verse that explicitly denies works as salvation’s ground. | 行い is mandatory and 業 is an absolute forbidden substitution for this curriculum, on par with the baseline’s prohibition of 解脱 for salvation. Add to translation memory as a Critical-tier forbidden-substitution entry, not merely a preference. |
| 作り話 (myths) [NEW, Medium-High] | Crowded: the natural one-word candidate 神話 (mythology) carries direct resonance with Japan’s own national origin narrative (Kojiki/Nihon Shoki, the imperial line’s descent from Amaterasu) — an echo of the baseline’s 神の国 political-theological caution. | Mandatory use of 作り話 (“fabricated tales”); 神話 is forbidden for this term in this curriculum. |
| 論争 (controversies), 系図 (genealogies), 分派を引き起こす人 (divisive person), 良心 (conscience), 戒める (rebuke) [NEW, Medium] | Each carries a milder version of the same problem: either dilution into secular usage (良心 as generic conscience without reference to God) or unwanted cultural friction (系図 vs. Japan’s koseki/ancestor-veneration culture; 分派を引き起こす人 needing to avoid the doctrinal-heterodoxy freight of 異端). | Retain glossary renderings; supply the specific distinguishing note already logged in bible_term_registry.json for each at first occurrence in teaching materials. |
Gap summary: This doctrine contains the single highest-stakes fencing decision in the entire curriculum (業 vs. 行い) plus a secondary, lower-stakes but still important fencing decision (神話 vs. 作り話) with structural resemblance to an existing baseline caution.
4. Salvation by Grace not Works
| Available Japanese Term(s) | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 救い / 救い主 (salvation / Savior) [REUSED + NEW extension, Critical/High] | 救い is settled per baseline (never 解脱; caution with 極楽往生 bridge language). 救い主 is a new but low-ambiguity extension; risk is consistency, not collision — six occurrences in one short letter must render identically. | No deviation permitted at 1:3, 4; 2:10, 13; 3:4, 6. Track as a single locked string. |
| 贖う (redeem) [NEW, Critical] | Crowded on two fronts: (1) dilution into the commercial “buy back” sense (買い戻す) common in everyday Japanese; (2) collision with the Buddhist merit-transfer concept 回向 (ekō), whereby accumulated merit is ritually transferred to benefit another — structurally close enough to “someone else’s action benefiting me” to be mistaken for the same shape as substitutionary redemption. | Retain 贖う; explicitly teach the difference from 回向: Christ’s redeeming act is a costly, one-time, no-repayment-expected rescue, not a transferable merit-credit within an ongoing karmic accounting system. |
| 義 / 義と認められること (righteousness / justified) [REUSED, Critical] | Titus 3:5 is the single hardest test of the baseline’s existing Bushido-virtue caution: “works done in righteousness” (義において行った行い) must still register as excluded from salvation’s ground, even though 義 here modifies works that look outwardly virtuous. Readers could reason: “if the deeds were done in true 義 (moral-courage virtue), surely they count for something.” | Require an explicit theologian’s note at 3:5 clarifying that even outwardly righteous deeds, evaluated by any standard, are excluded as salvation’s basis — the forensic sense of 義 must govern even this qualifying clause. |
| 憐れみ (mercy), 慈愛 (kindness), 人への深い愛情 (love for mankind), 望み (hope), 永遠のいのち (eternal life) [NEW, Medium] | Mostly biblical-illiteracy/dilution risk rather than false-concept collision: 慈愛 avoids the too-casual 親切; 人への深い愛情 avoids the fully secularized CSR loanword フィランソロピー; 望み must be distinguished from casual 希望. | Retain glossary renderings; no loanwords for philanthropia under any circumstance. |
| 私たちの偉大な神であり救い主であるイエス・キリスト (the 2:13 single-referent clause) [NEW, Critical] | Missing-vocabulary problem at the grammatical level: Japanese has no equivalent to the Greek single-article “Sharp’s rule” construction that forces one-referent reading. A naive translation risks being readable as two figures (“our great God, and [our] Savior Jesus Christ”) rather than one (“Jesus Christ, who is our great God and Savior”). | Fixed compound string already logged in the glossary; mandatory [TRANSLATOR NOTE] and theologian review at every occurrence; no alternate phrasing permitted without escalation. |
Gap summary: This doctrine combines the curriculum’s second-highest-stakes fencing problem (贖う vs. 回向/買い戻す) with its hardest pure grammar-transfer problem (the 2:13 single-referent clause), for which Japanese has no native structural equivalent and a constructed, fixed phrase is the only safe solution.
5. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit
| Available Japanese Term(s) | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 新しく生まれること (regeneration, παλιγγενεσία) [NEW, Critical] | The single highest-collision-risk term in the entire curriculum. The literal sense (“again-birth”) sits within one semantic step of 輪廻転生 (the Buddhist reincarnation cycle, already an absolute baseline prohibition) and within an even smaller step of the casual secular idiom 生まれ変わり (“being reborn”), now heavily used in astrology, self-help, and lifestyle-reinvention marketing (“生まれ変わったような気分” — “I feel like a new person”). Both neighboring terms describe repeatable or this-life transformation; Titus 3:5 describes a one-time, Spirit-wrought, non-repeatable re-origination. | 新しく生まれること is mandatory; 輪廻転生 is an absolute forbidden substitution; stand-alone 生まれ変わり is prohibited without heavy qualification. Mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence, matching the baseline’s Incarnation/Resurrection escalation tier. |
| 新たにすること (renewal, ἀνακαίνωσις) [NEW, Medium] | Crowded: the natural one-word alternative 更新 is the default modern term for renewing a contract, license, or subscription (契約更新), paralleling the baseline’s existing 契約/covenant dilution caution. | Prefer 新たにすること in doctrinal contexts; if 更新 is used elsewhere for stylistic variation, it must be qualified as 聖霊による更新. |
| 洗い (washing, λουτρόν) [NEW, Medium-High] | Crowded: Japan’s Shinto ritual-purification tradition (禊, misogi; 水垢離, mizugori) supplies vivid, culturally available water-purification imagery that could suggest the water itself performs a ritual-magical cleansing act. | Teach explicitly: the washing symbolizes but does not itself accomplish regeneration; the Spirit, tied to the washing by a single governing preposition in the Greek grammar of 3:5, is the effective agent. |
| 聖霊 (Holy Spirit) [REUSED, Critical] | Baseline risk (never 霊 alone) is fully active here and intensified: 3:5’s grammar makes the Spirit, not the water, the regenerating agent — an easy point to lose in translation if the sentence structure buries the Spirit’s agency. | Preserve 聖霊 exactly; ensure translated sentence structure keeps the Spirit as the grammatically prominent agent of the regenerating/renewing action. |
Gap summary: This doctrine contains the curriculum’s single most dangerous crowded-neighborhood problem — a near-homophone-of-meaning collision between orthodox regeneration and both classical Buddhist reincarnation and casual self-help “rebirth” — for which no simpler one-word solution exists; the multi-character descriptive phrase is a deliberate fence, not a stylistic choice.
6. Submission to Authority
| Available Japanese Term(s) | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 従う (submit, ὑποτάσσω) [NEW, High] | Crowded on the social-behavior axis: Japan’s group-conformity instinct (“reading the air,” 空気を読む), corporate/seniority hierarchy (senpai-kōhai structure), and historic loyalty-to-superior ethics (Bushido) all supply ready-made reflexive compliance models that could absorb this term without remainder, erasing Paul’s actual sense of a considered, voluntary, gospel-adorning submission modeled on Christ. Recurs across three distinct relational domains (wives 2:5, slaves 2:9, civil rulers 3:1), multiplying the risk. | Retain 従う but require a consistent explanatory frame at each of the three occurrences distinguishing voluntary, gospel-motivated submission from reflexive social-hierarchy compliance; treat as a tracked term-family parallel to the baseline’s obedience_of_faith caution. |
| 権威 (authorities, ἐξουσίαι) [NEW, Critical] | The single most politically sensitive term in the curriculum. Two opposite failure modes are both live: (a) collapsing into unquestioning wartime-style state obedience, given Japan’s 20th-century experience of totalitarian State Shinto government; (b) collapsing into mere reflexive social-hierarchy compliance (the opposite direction from failure mode (a), but equally distorting Paul’s actual argument, which is about gospel witness through good citizenship, not about the nature of state power itself). | Mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence; teaching materials must state explicitly that this is submission to legitimate civil governance for the sake of gospel witness (cf. Romans 13:1, already Critical in the baseline), not a general theory of state authority. |
| 支配者たち (rulers), 服従する (obey) [NEW, Medium-High] | 支配者たち requires historical framing for the same reason as 権威. 服従する risks flattening the Greek’s rhetorical doubling (ὑποτάσσω + πειθαρχεῖν) into one repeated idea if not rendered distinctly from 従う. | Use distinct verbs for the two Greek terms in 3:1 rather than one repeated word; supply historical framing note wherever 支配者たち appears. |
| 温和 (gentle, ἐπιεικής) / 柔和 (gentleness, πραΰτης) [NEW, Low-Medium] | Both risk over-easy conflation with Japan’s harmony-preserving 和 (wa) culture, reframing biblical gentleness/meekness as mere conflict-avoidance rather than strength held in restraint. | Retain distinct terms per glossary; teach 柔和 specifically as restrained strength (cf. Matthew 11:29), not passivity. |
Gap summary: No missing vocabulary here — Japanese has ample words for submission and authority — but this doctrine has the curriculum’s most acute crowded-neighborhood problem on the social-cultural axis, requiring active fencing against both directions of distortion (uncritical compliance vs. uncritical resistance/skepticism) simultaneously.
7. Avoiding Divisive Controversies
| Available Japanese Term(s) | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 論争 (controversies), 系図 (genealogies), 作り話 (myths) [see Doctrine 3 above] | Cross-listed; same risks apply. | See Doctrine 3 entries. |
| 分派を引き起こす人 (divisive person, αἱρετικὸς ἄνθρωπος) [NEW, Medium] | Crowded: the natural loanword-adjacent technical term 異端 (heresy) is available and used in Japanese Christian contexts, but carries the later, doctrinal-heterodoxy sense of the word rather than Paul’s earlier, behavior-focused sense (a person who causes factions through persistent quarrelsomeness). | 異端 is a forbidden substitution for this specific term; retain the descriptive phrase 分派を引き起こす人 to keep the focus on behavior, not doctrinal-purity testing. |
| 警告 (admonition), 自分自身を罪に定めている (self-condemned), 実を結ばない (unfruitful), 争いと律法についての論争 (quarrels about the law) [NEW, Low] | Low collision risk; mainly standard descriptive vocabulary. | Retain as logged; no special fencing required. |
Gap summary: This doctrine’s risks are already captured under Doctrine 3’s crowded-neighborhood entries; its one distinctive addition is the 異端-vs-behavioral-sense fencing decision for “divisive person.”
Part 2: Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Missing Vocabulary (no adequate existing Japanese term; constructed/descriptive phrasing required)
| Concept | Why No Ready Term Exists | Constructed Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Grace as active trainer (παιδεύω, 2:12) | No existing compound frames grace itself, rather than the trainee’s willpower, as the agent of moral formation. | 訓練する with grace kept as explicit grammatical subject; no single word suffices — a subject-explicit sentence structure is the actual “term.” |
| The 2:13 single-referent “great God and Savior” clause | Japanese, like English, lacks a grammatical device equivalent to Greek’s single-article dual-title construction that forces a one-person reading. | Fixed constructed phrase: 私たちの偉大な神であり救い主であるイエス・キリスト. Any paraphrase must preserve the single-referent reading; treat as a locked string, not translatable-on-the-fly. |
| παλιγγενεσία / regeneration as a technical, non-repeatable, Spirit-wrought event | No single existing Japanese word is untouched by either Buddhist rebirth-cycle vocabulary or secular self-help “reinvention” vocabulary. | Multi-character descriptive phrase 新しく生まれること, deliberately avoiding both the Buddhist compound (輪廻転生) and the casual idiom (生まれ変わり). |
| φιλανθρωπία / God’s love for mankind as a divine attribute | The only compact modern Japanese equivalent is a fully secularized katakana loanword (フィランソロピー, corporate CSR philanthropy). | Descriptive phrase 人への深い愛情, avoiding the loanword entirely. |
| λαὸς περιούσιος / “treasured possession people” (2:14) | No existing short Japanese phrase carries the Exodus 19:5 covenant background; readers have no OT narrative literacy to draw on. | Descriptive phrase 神ご自身の宝の民, requiring active teaching of the Exodus background at first occurrence rather than relying on the phrase alone to carry it. |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing (adequate-looking Japanese terms exist but are already occupied by a competing meaning)
| Japanese Term Zone | Competing Occupant | Fence Required |
|---|---|---|
| 業 (waza/gō) vs. 行い | Buddhist karma (自業自得) | 業 absolutely forbidden for soteriological “works”; 行い mandatory. Highest-stakes fence in the curriculum. |
| 生まれ変わり / 輪廻転生 vs. 新しく生まれること | Buddhist reincarnation; secular self-help “rebirth” | 輪廻転生 absolutely forbidden; 生まれ変わり prohibited stand-alone. Second-highest-stakes fence. |
| 神話 vs. 作り話 | Japan’s own national-origin mythology (Kojiki/Amaterasu imperial descent) | 神話 forbidden for Titus’s “myths”; 作り話 mandatory. |
| 従う vs. voluntary gospel-motivated submission | Reflexive social-hierarchy compliance (senpai-kōhai, Bushido loyalty, 空気を読む) | Explanatory frame required at every one of the three occurrences (2:5, 2:9, 3:1). |
| 権威/支配者たち vs. legitimate civil governance for gospel witness | Pre-1945 State Shinto totalitarian state authority (historical trauma) | Mandatory historical framing note; theologian review at every occurrence. |
| 健全な教え vs. apostolic-truth-consistency | Secular “healthy/wholesome/moderate” usage (finances, media ratings) | Restore the medical (health vs. disease) metaphor’s doctrinal edge at first use. |
| 監督 vs. spiritual oversight office | Secular supervisory roles (film director, sports manager, work supervisor) | Explicit pairing with 長老 as two descriptions of one office. |
| 長老 vs. examined-qualification office | Age-honorific respect culture (敬老) | Immediate pairing with the qualification list (1:6–9). |
| 異端 vs. 分派を引き起こす人 | Later doctrinal-heterodoxy technical sense | 異端 forbidden for this term; behavioral-sense phrase mandatory. |
| 回向/買い戻す vs. 贖う | Buddhist merit-transfer; commercial buy-back | Both forbidden as substitutes; teach costly, non-repayable, one-time rescue sense. |
| 系図 vs. condemnation of speculative myth-genealogies | Japan’s koseki family-registry and Obon ancestor-veneration culture | Clarify Paul condemns speculative use, not genealogical interest as such. |
| 更新 vs. 新たにすること | Commercial contract/subscription renewal (契約更新) | Prefer descriptive phrase; qualify 更新 explicitly with 聖霊による if used. |
| 洗い vs. Spirit-accomplished symbolic washing | Shinto ritual purification (禊, 水垢離) | Teach water symbolizes, Spirit accomplishes. |
Part 3: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Savior (σωτήρ) | Native kanji compound (救い主), NOT transliteration | Already an established Japanese Christian term; no benefit to a loanword, and 救い主 correctly signals “the one who saves” rather than an imported foreign title. |
| Epiphaneia/appearing (ἐπιφάνεια) | Native descriptive phrase (現れる/現れ), NOT transliteration (“エピファニー”) and NOT the forbidden 化身/権化 | A katakana loanword would sound technical/foreign and fail to connect with the passage’s plain visual sense of grace/glory/kindness becoming visible; a native verb preserves accessibility while avoiding the forbidden Buddhist-manifestation vocabulary. |
| Philanthrōpia (φιλανθρωπία) | Native descriptive phrase (人への深い愛情), explicitly NOT the katakana loanword フィランソロピー | The loanword is fully captured by secular corporate-CSR usage in modern Japanese business vocabulary; using it would reduce a divine attribute to a corporate buzzword. |
| Regeneration (παλιγγενεσία) | Native descriptive phrase (新しく生まれること), NOT a single-word coinage or transliteration | A one-word coinage risks looking like a technical neologism disconnected from ordinary reading comprehension; the descriptive phrase is both doctrinally precise and accessible, while structurally distancing itself from 生まれ変わり/輪廻転生. |
| Trustworthy saying formula (Πιστὸς ὁ λόγος) | Paraphrase (この言葉は信頼できる), NOT a fixed idiom borrowed from another tradition | No natural Japanese proverbial equivalent exists; a plain paraphrase is safest and most transparent for a Pastoral Epistles formula that will recur if a 1–2 Timothy curriculum follows. |
| Abba-style Aramaic retentions | Not applicable in Titus (no Aramaic terms of intimacy occur in this letter) | Noted for completeness; no transliteration decision required here, unlike Romans 8:15’s アバ. |
| Proper names (Jesus, Christ, Titus, Crete, Nicopolis) | Established Shinkaiyaku transliterated forms (イエス, キリスト, テトス, クレテ, ニコポリス) | Consistency with baseline convention; never revert to Kirishitan-era forms (e.g., ゼズス). |
| Great God and Savior clause (2:13) | Constructed native phrase, NOT a transliterated Greek grammatical gloss | The single-referent force must be carried by Japanese sentence construction, not by an explanatory transliteration; this is a grammar-transfer problem, not a vocabulary problem. |
| ἀσέβεια / εὐσέβεια (ungodliness/godliness) | Native Sino-Japanese compounds (不敬虔/敬虔), NOT transliteration | These are formal but genuinely existing Japanese theological compounds; the risk is blankness (unfamiliarity), addressed by glossing, not by a foreign-sounding loanword that would compound the unfamiliarity. |
General transliteration principle for this curriculum: transliterate only established proper names and previously-fixed Aramaic/Greek liturgical terms already in the baseline (アーメン, ハレルヤ, アバ where applicable). For every doctrinal concept without a settled native rendering, prefer a constructed native descriptive phrase over a katakana loanword — loanwords in modern Japanese are disproportionately associated with secular commercial, entertainment, or corporate-CSR usage, which would systematically undercut doctrinal weight across nearly every term surveyed above.
Part 4: Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Titus
Ranked by (a) doctrinal centrality to Titus 2:11–3:8, (b) severity of the competing meaning if mistranslated, and (c) breadth of exposure (number of occurrences / how load-bearing the term is to the letter’s argument).
- 業 vs. 行い (good works vs. Buddhist karma) — Critical. Occurs 7 times (1:16; 2:7, 14; 3:1, 8, 14 and the negation at 3:5); a single lapse at 3:5 would silently reverse the letter’s central grace/works argument.
- 新しく生まれること vs. 輪廻転生/生まれ変わり (regeneration vs. reincarnation/self-help rebirth) — Critical. Single occurrence (3:5) but names the doctrine itself; the nearest competing concepts are both well-known and well-embedded in Japanese religious and pop-secular vocabulary.
- 私たちの偉大な神であり救い主であるイエス・キリスト (Titus 2:13 single-referent clause) — Critical. A pure grammar-transfer problem with no native Japanese structural equivalent; failure here directly weakens the deity-of-Christ doctrine at one of the NT’s clearest proof texts.
- 恵み contrasted with 行い under on-giri reciprocity pressure (3:4–7 and 2:11–12) — Critical. The letter’s two most concentrated grace-passages are also its two highest-density on-giri collision zones; must be actively fenced at every occurrence, not just once.
- 権威/支配者たち (authorities/rulers, 3:1) — Critical. Politically live in a way most other terms are not, given 20th-century Japanese state history; risk of distortion runs in two opposite directions simultaneously.
- 訓練する with 恵み as subject (2:12) — Critical. No existing Japanese phrase safely conveys grace-as-agent; default renderings will reflexively supply a self-effort framework (修行/根性論).
- 贖う vs. 回向/買い戻す (redeem, 2:14) — Critical. Structural resemblance between substitutionary redemption and Buddhist merit-transfer is subtle enough to pass unnoticed without explicit teaching.
- 義 in the “works done in righteousness” qualifying clause (3:5) — Critical. The hardest single-verse test of the baseline’s existing Bushido-virtue caution on 義, because here it modifies works that are conceded to be outwardly good yet still excluded.
- 従う across three relational domains (2:5, 2:9, 3:1) — High. Breadth of exposure (three distinct relationships) multiplies a single underlying risk of collapsing into reflexive hierarchical compliance.
- 健全な教え (sound doctrine, 4 occurrences) — High. High-frequency keyword with a strong secular-dilution pull that could flatten the letter’s central “true vs. false teaching” stakes into “moderate vs. extreme” messaging.
- 長老/監督 (elder/overseer, ch. 1) — High. Two correct terms, two different unwanted default associations (age-honorific / secular-supervisory), both requiring active correction in the same short passage.
- 神ご自身の宝の民 (treasured possession people, 2:14) — High. Compounds an OT biblical-illiteracy gap with a live Japan-specific political-theological echo (神国日本-style national-exceptionalism resonance).
- 作り話 vs. 神話 (myths, 1:14) — Medium-High. Lower breadth of exposure (single occurrence) but a clean structural parallel to the baseline’s already-flagged 神の国 sensitivity.
- 異端 vs. 分派を引き起こす人 (divisive person, 3:10) — Medium. Risk is a subtle doctrinal-purity reframing rather than outright theological error.
- 系図 (genealogies, 3:9) — Medium. Cultural friction risk (koseki/ancestor culture) rather than doctrinal distortion; easily resolved with a single clarifying sentence.
Summary and Handoff
This analysis surfaces two genuinely novel missing-vocabulary problems not present in the Romans baseline (the 2:13 single-referent grammar transfer, and grace-as-active-trainer in 2:12), one collision risk of comparable severity to the baseline’s highest-tier cautions (regeneration vs. reincarnation, structurally parallel to resurrection vs. reincarnation), and one collision risk (業 vs. 行い) that is arguably the single highest-stakes lexical decision across both the Romans and Titus curricula combined, because it sits at the exact verse (3:5) that most directly states the letter’s — and the gospel’s — works-exclusion claim. All fencing decisions and forbidden substitutions identified here should be written into the Titus extension of translation_memory.json before Phase 2 segment translation begins, per the term-discovery protocol in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.