Executive Summary: Acts 1–28 (English → Konkani)

Why it matters

Konkani is the destination language for a full-book translation requirements package covering Acts 1–28, anchored theologically at Acts 2:1–41 (Pentecost). Konkani is unusual in this pipeline: it already has two mature, centuries-old Christian-adjacent vocabularies (Goan Catholic Romi Konkani, and the Devanagari Bible Society of India tradition this package follows) sitting alongside a living, locally-anchored Hindu devotional tradition (Shantadurga, Mangueshi, and — most acutely relevant to Acts — Mahalasa Narayani’s Mohini-avatar veneration at the Mardol temple). Acts intensifies, and in several places sharpens beyond Romans, the exact syncretism risks the baseline Romans package already flagged: Spirit-filling versus trance-possession, baptism versus ritual bathing, repentance versus karmic expiation, and incarnation/ascension versus avatar-descent all recur here with higher frequency and higher narrative visibility than in Romans. Getting this package right protects nine curriculum doctrines — Holy Spirit and Pentecost, Gospel to Jews and Gentiles, Repentance and Baptism, Church as Community, Apostolic Authority and Miracles, Persecution and Bold Witness, Conversion of Paul, Justification apart from the Law, and the Great Commission Fulfilled — from being read through a Goan Hindu or karma-merit theological grid rather than the text’s own.

Key findings

• Full-book coverage complete. All 28 chapters were analyzed (semantic, doctrinal, and linguistic-gap passes); no chapter was silently skipped — chapters with no new load-bearing vocabulary (6, 18, 21, 23–25, 27) are explicitly marked “reviewed — no new doctrine/gap.”
• Merged translation memory now totals 88 terms: 47 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 41 new to Acts (38 core terms plus 3 curriculum-management entries covering “authority,” the unresolved “conversion” doctrine-label gap, and the “Great Commission” heading-label gap).
• Term-level risk: 57 of 88 terms (18 Critical + 39 High) require mandatory human theologian review under the glossary enforcement priority order; only 7 Low-risk terms are automated-review-only.
• Doctrine-level risk (per assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json / analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md): 34 total doctrines, 12 Critical + 15 High = 27 requiring human theologian review, 6 requiring native-speaker review, and 1 (Mutual Fellowship and Shared Life) sufficient with automated review.
• One genuine curriculum-level vocabulary gap remains unresolved at the lexical level: “conversion” as a doctrine-label noun has no safe fixed Konkani term (धर्मांतर carries Inquisition-era coercion connotations specific to Goa; मतपरिवर्तन under-sells the transformation) and has been deliberately routed to teacher’s-guide-only, theologian-reviewed framing rather than forced into a Scripture-text term.

Risks

• Highest-priority risk in the whole curriculum: “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4 and its five recurrences) colliding with Goan folk-Hindu trance/possession vocabulary (आवेश/अंगारो येणें) — a documented, live local phenomenology, not a hypothetical concern.
• Highest pastoral-sensitivity risk: मूर्ती (“idol,” Acts 15:20; 17:16; 19:26) is the same ordinary, affectionate word used for Hindu temple images central to Goan devotional life; no safer lexical substitute exists, so mitigation depends entirely on framing discipline, not word choice.
• Highest social-consequence risk: “common/unclean” and “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10, 10:34-35) land directly on Goa’s caste-purity social grammar; softening either would blunt a doctrine the text itself does not soften.
• Recurring risk of Konkani idiom drifting toward fatalistic phrasing (नशीब/प्रारब्ध) when rendering providence and God’s “determined plan” (Acts 2:23), election, and calling — already flagged in Romans, now recurring at higher frequency.
• “The Way” (9:2; 18:25-26; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22) risks quiet erosion into pluralistic मार्ग phrasing over a long translation project if enforcement lapses even once.

Opportunities

• Acts 14:11-15 (Lystra) offers a built-in, textually authentic apologetic model: the apostles themselves urgently reject an avatar-style misidentification of their own ministry — reusable teaching material for explaining why Christ’s incarnation is not one more avatar story.
• Thomas Stephens’ 1616 Kristapurana remains a positive, citable local precedent for serious, non-coercive, culturally resonant gospel communication, distinct from and a needed counterweight to the Goa Inquisition’s coercive-conversion history.
• Acts’ own vocabulary (साक्षी/witness, निर्भयपण/boldness) has a natural legal-register resonance in ordinary Konkani that strengthens rather than dilutes the doctrine of eyewitness testimony to the resurrection.
• सेवा as a shared bridge-word for diaconal service, and वडील for church leadership, offer genuine points of natural-sounding contact with Goan social vocabulary, provided both are consistently marked as calling/gifting-based rather than merit- or lineage-based.

Recommended actions

1. Merge assets/translation_memory.json (this Acts package) with the Romans baseline before any Phase 2 segment translation begins; treat any apparent term conflict as a hard stop requiring escalation, not silent resolution.
2. Schedule additional theologian review capacity specifically for Acts chapters 2, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17, and 20, which carry the highest concentration of Critical/High doctrine.
3. Require the mandatory translator notes specified in analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md at every occurrence of Spirit-filling, “the Way,” common/unclean, the Lystra episode, the Areopagus/idols passage, and Acts 20:28’s atonement statement.
4. Route the unresolved “conversion” doctrine-label gap to a theologian for a teacher’s-guide-only framing decision before any curriculum material naming this doctrine is finalized.
5. Carry forward, unchanged, every Critical forbidden-substitution rule from the Romans baseline; add the Acts-specific forbidden list (प्रायश्चित्त, स्नान, आवेश/अंगारो, नांव जपप्, मार्ग, गुरू, धर्मांतर/मतपरिवर्तन) to every Phase 2 worker’s validation pass from day one.