Linguistic Gap Analysis: Galatians (English → Korean)
Purpose and Scope
This document executes the linguistic gap analysis mandated for Phase 1 Step 8: it maps each of the fourteen assigned Galatians doctrines against available Korean vocabulary, identifies semantic gaps and “crowded neighborhoods” requiring deliberate fencing against collision, records transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions, and ranks this letter’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 escalation routing. It extends, and must never contradict, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json, and incorporates every term already surfaced in analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json.
Core passage (theological anchor, not scope boundary): Galatians 2:15-21 — Paul’s confrontation of Peter at Antioch, containing in miniature nearly every Critical-tier term in this curriculum (justification, works of the law, faith in/of Christ, crucified with Christ, died to the law, grace, in vain). Full-book coverage below spans Galatians 1-6 in their entirety.
Chapter coverage confirmation: Galatians 1 (gospel integrity, apostleship, calling) — reviewed, load-bearing. Galatians 2 (justification, core passage, law/grace) — reviewed, load-bearing, anchor chapter. Galatians 3 (faith, Abrahamic covenant/promise, law’s purpose, curse/redemption) — reviewed, load-bearing. Galatians 4 (adoption/sonship, incarnation, elemental things, allegory) — reviewed, load-bearing. Galatians 5 (freedom, flesh/Spirit, fruit of the Spirit, faith working through love) — reviewed, load-bearing. Galatians 6 (bearing burdens, law of Christ, new creation, boasting) — reviewed, load-bearing. No chapter in Galatians is doctrinally silent; all six contribute Critical- or High-tier vocabulary.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each assigned doctrine: available Korean term(s), weaknesses of the available vocabulary, and the recommended translation strategy.
1.1 Justification by Faith
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 의 (righteousness), 의롭다 하심 (justification, Reused Critical), 의롭다 함을 얻다 / 의롭게 되다 (verb forms), 의로 여기심 (imputed righteousness), 믿음 (faith) |
| Weaknesses | 의 sits in the same semantic field as 의리 (uiri), the Confucian-inflected social-loyalty concept prominent in Korean popular ethics and film culture; a hearer can default to a relational-loyalty-earned reading rather than a forensic-declared one. Korean verb morphology also naturally distinguishes 하심 (a declarative causative, “God’s act of declaring”) from 되다 (a process verb, “coming to be”), but sloppy translation can flatten this distinction and drift toward describing justification as gradual moral transformation rather than a one-time forensic verdict. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 의롭다 하심/의롭다 함을 얻다 exactly per baseline; mandate the distinguishing 의리-contrast footnote at every occurrence (2:16-17, 21; 3:8, 11, 24; 5:4), as already required by baseline. Because Galatians’ opponents offered a performance path that would read exactly like uiri obligation (covenant loyalty displayed through law-keeping), this doctrine carries elevated urgency here versus Romans — recommend the footnote explicitly name the Judaizing parallel to uiri-style obligation-fulfillment in Phase 2 teaching notes, not just the abstract lexical caution. |
1.2 The True Gospel versus False Gospels
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 복음 (gospel, Reused Medium/High), 다른 복음 (different gospel, new Critical), 저주를 받을지어다 (accursed, new High), 복음의 진리 (truth of the gospel, new High), 거짓 형제들 (false brothers, new Medium) |
| Weaknesses | 복음’s root 복 (bok) already collides with 기복신앙 (fortune-seeking faith); Galatians compounds this because 1:6-9 stages a direct true/false gospel binary and 3:14 adds “아브라함의 복” (blessing of Abraham), reusing the same root in a doctrinally central promise-text. A Korean reader primed by 기복신앙 patterns may parse “다른 복음” as another route to blessing rather than an illegitimate counterfeit message, precisely inverting Paul’s point. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 복음/다른 복음 exactly; require translator notes at every 1:6-9 occurrence explicitly stating 다른 is categorical-exclusion (heteros), not enumerable-alternative. Pair every occurrence of 복음 in chs. 1-2 with explicit catechetical framing (in surrounding lesson prose, not the translated verse text itself) that the gospel is justification/Spirit-reception, not forecasted material blessing — reinforcing the same discipline already required at 3:14’s 아브라함의 복. |
1.3 Paul’s Apostleship
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 사도 (apostle, Reused; risk elevated to High for this curriculum), 계시 (revelation, new Medium), 조상의 유전 (tradition of the fathers, new High) |
| Weaknesses | 사도 itself is lexically stable and low-collision, but Galatians 1:1, 1:11-17, 2:6-9 mount an unusually sustained legal-style defense of apostolic legitimacy not present at this intensity in Romans; the doctrinal stakes of the term, not its lexical form, are what require elevation. 계시 must be fenced against Korean folk-divinatory “revelation” claims (a mudang’s spirit-message, a fortune-teller’s disclosure). 조상의 유전 is lexically transparent but sits directly inside the jesa (제사) ancestor-rite semantic field already flagged Critical under the baseline’s father entry — a careless reading could imply either an endorsement or a condemnation of ancestor veneration that Paul is not making. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 사도 exactly, elevate review routing to Human theologian for all defense-of-apostleship passages (1:1, 1:11-24, 2:1-10). Retain 계시 with explicit non-divinatory framing. Render 조상의 유전 with a translator’s note clarifying the target is Paul’s own former zealous rabbinic tradition, not a general verdict on ancestor-honoring practice as such — this note is essential given Korea’s church-historical sensitivity to jesa. |
1.4 Law and Grace
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 율법 (law, Reused High), 은혜 (grace, Reused Critical), 율법의 행위 (works of the law, new Critical), 폐하다 (nullify, new Medium), 범법자 (transgressor, new Medium), 그리스도의 법 (law of Christ, new Medium-High) |
| Weaknesses | 율법 must never be equated with 예 (Confucian ritual-propriety/etiquette code) or reduced to 법률 (secular/civil law) — both established baseline cautions, but Galatians is structurally organized around a law/grace antithesis far more sustained than Romans’ (nearly every verse of chs. 2-5 touches it), multiplying the surface area for drift. 은혜 remains the single highest-stakes term in the whole pipeline for Korean given 기복신앙; Galatians 5:4 (“fallen from grace”) and 2:21 (“nullify the grace of God”) stage the grace/works antithesis at maximal intensity. Crucially, Galatians itself lexically distinguishes 율법 (Mosaic law) from 법 (general “law/rule”) in the deliberately different phrase 그리스도의 법 (6:2, “law of Christ”) — this distinction is a genuine asset if preserved, and a serious doctrinal error if collapsed (it would imply reinstated Torah-observance as the believer’s rule of life). |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 율법/은혜 exactly. Preserve the 율법 vs. 법 lexical distinction at 6:2 without exception — flag any Phase 2 draft that renders “law of Christ” using 율법 as an automatic Critical-tier error requiring correction, not merely a stylistic flag. Route every grace/works antithesis passage (2:16-21; 3:1-14; 5:1-4) to Human theologian review per baseline escalation rules. |
1.5 Crucified with Christ
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 그리스도와 함께 십자가에 못 박혔나니 (crucified with Christ, new Critical), 육체를 십자가에 못 박았느니라 (crucified the flesh, new High), 죽었나니 (died, in 율법에 대하여 죽었나니), 나를 위하여 자기 자신을 버리셨느니라 (gave himself for me, new High) |
| Weaknesses | Korean has no single perfect-tense-equivalent grammatical marker that automatically conveys “a past event with continuing present effect” the way Greek’s perfect tense (συνεσταύρωμαι) does; Korean verb aspect must instead be carried through surrounding clause structure and explicit teaching framing. Without deliberate handling, this reads as either a repeatable event or a merely past, closed-off one — both wrong. There is also a live risk that “crucified with Christ” and “crucified the flesh” (5:24) could be assimilated to Korean Buddhist/folk-religious ascetic self-mortification (수행, 고행) patterns of ongoing self-discipline, since both involve bodily suffering-language applied to spiritual transformation. |
| Recommended strategy | Use consistent verb-ending choices (-았/었- perfective past + narrative framing establishing ongoing significance) and mandate a translator’s note at 2:19-20 and 5:24 explicitly distinguishing this once-for-all judicial/positional reality from ascetic self-mortification. Mandatory Human theologian review at both occurrences, plus at 2:20’s substitutionary “gave himself for me,” per the baseline’s atonement-language escalation rule. |
1.6 The Abrahamic Covenant and Promise
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 언약 (covenant, Reused Low/High), 약속 (promise, new High), 아브라함의 복 (blessing of Abraham, new High), 자손 (seed/offspring, new Medium), 의로 여기심 (imputed righteousness, Reused Critical) |
| Weaknesses | 언약/약속 are lexically distinct in Korean (a genuine asset, per baseline’s note on 언약 vs. 계약), but Galatians for the first time in this pipeline requires holding both 언약 and 약속 in close doctrinal proximity within a single sustained argument (3:15-29) — the risk is not confusion with a secular contract but the two terms collapsing into synonyms in translators’ practice, blurring Paul’s distinct legal-priority argument (the promise predates and is not annulled by the later-given law). 자손 does not mark Greek’s singular/plural distinction as sharply, weakening the force of Paul’s typological argument that the singular “seed” points to Christ. 아브라함의 복 reuses the 복 root already flagged for fortune-collision risk. |
| Recommended strategy | Maintain 언약/약속 as distinct headwords with a style-guide rule that they are never used interchangeably within ch. 3’s argument. Add a translator’s note at 3:16 and 3:29 explaining the singular/plural argument explicitly, since 자손 alone cannot carry it. Route 아브라함의 복 to Human theologian review with mandatory teaching-note pairing (justification/Spirit, not material prosperity). |
1.7 The Law’s Purpose
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 율법 (Reused High), 범죄들 때문에 더하여진 것 (added because of transgressions, new High), 초등교사 (guardian/paidagōgos, new High), 죽었나니 (died to the law) |
| Weaknesses | 초등교사 is KRV’s established rendering but literally reads as “elementary-level teacher” — in Korean cultural framing, a teacher (especially one bearing the 교사/스승 register) commands durable, often lifelong deference (cf. 사제지간, teacher-disciple bonds; 훈장님 in traditional village-school contexts). The paidagōgos, by contrast, was a household slave with intrinsically temporary, custodial authority that Paul explicitly says has ended (3:25) — the Korean word’s connotation of ongoing academic-authority respect runs directly against the passage’s logic of superseded, expired authority. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 초등교사 as the established KRV term (no viable single-word substitute exists), but mandate an explicit translator’s/teaching note at every occurrence (3:24-25) stating plainly that this is a temporary, now-ended supervisory role, not a permanently authoritative teacher-relationship — this inversion must be taught explicitly rather than left to the word’s default connotation. Human theologian review required. |
1.8 Adoption and Sonship
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 양자 (adoption, Reused High), 아버지 (Father, Reused Critical), 아빠 (Abba, Reused High), 하나님의 아들 (Son of God, Reused Critical), 상속자 (heir, new High), 종 (slave, new High) |
| Weaknesses | Traditional Korean heir-adoption (양자) existed historically to continue Confucian ancestor-memorial rites (제사) — an instrumental, lineage-continuation purpose, not a relational-belonging one. Galatians 4:1-7 makes the slave-to-son transition, and the accompanying inheritance (상속자), the letter’s central family-status argument; if 양자/상속자 default to their traditional Korean connotation, the doctrine inverts into “adopted to keep up ritual duties” rather than “adopted into full relational sonship and inheritance.” The 종 (slave) headword must additionally be tracked with total consistency across 1:10, 4:1, 4:7, 4:24-25, 5:1 — the whole slave/son argument depends on readers recognizing the same word recurring. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 양자/상속자/종 exactly; mandate a translator’s note at 4:1-7 explicitly contrasting biblical adoption’s relational purpose against jesa-continuation adoption’s instrumental purpose. Track 종 as a single, non-substitutable headword across every occurrence — flag any Phase 2 draft using a synonym (e.g., 노예, 하인) as an automatic consistency error. |
1.9 Freedom in Christ
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 자유 (freedom, new High), 부르심 (called, Reused High, extended sense “called to freedom” 5:13), 종의 멍에 (yoke of slavery, new Medium) |
| Weaknesses | 자유 carries strong modern political/civic connotations in Korean public discourse (자유민주주의, “liberal democracy”; 자유무역, “free trade”), risking the term being heard primarily as political liberty rather than freedom from sin’s condemnation and the law’s curse. Additionally, 5:13 itself warns against using freedom “as an opportunity for the flesh” — a caution easily lost if 자유 is read through a purely political-rights lens where the only relevant question is removal of external restriction, not right use in love. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 자유; require every occurrence in ch. 5 to be paired in surrounding teaching prose with the 5:13 qualifier (freedom for loving service, not license), preventing an autonomous-rights-only reading. Native speaker review recommended to confirm the political-register risk is adequately fenced in context. |
1.10 Circumcision and the New Creation
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 할례 (circumcision, new High), 새로운 피조물 (new creation, new Critical), 우상숭배/주술 (works-of-flesh items, background), 자랑 (boasting, new Medium) |
| Weaknesses | 할례 has low cultural-collision risk in Korea (no competing indigenous circumcision practice to confuse it with) but correspondingly very high doctrinal weight — the danger is treating it as a religiously-neutral cultural custom Paul merely finds unnecessary, when Galatians’ actual claim is that compelling circumcision for justification is itself a false gospel (5:2-4). 새로운 피조물 must never drift toward 환생/윤회 (rebirth/reincarnation), already forbidden under the baseline’s resurrection entry, given surface similarity between “a wholly new mode of existence” language and Buddhist rebirth concepts. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain 할례/새로운 피조물 exactly. Mandate explicit teaching framing that circumcision-as-requirement-for-justification is itself the false gospel of 1:6-9, not a separate lesser issue. Standardize 새로운 피조물 as the nominal form for cross-curriculum consistency with 2 Corinthians 5:17; mandatory theologian review at 6:15. |
1.11 Flesh versus Spirit
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 육체 (flesh, new High/Critical, two senses), 성령 (Holy Spirit, Reused Critical), 육체의 일 (works of the flesh, new Critical), 성령의 열매 (fruit of the Spirit, new High), 성령을 따라 행하라 (keep in step with the Spirit, new High) |
| Weaknesses | 육체 carries two distinct Pauline senses — (1) neutral physical existence (2:20) and (2) morally-charged fallen human nature in active opposition to the Spirit (ch. 5) — and Korean readers, absent careful disambiguation, risk hearing the moral sense as denigrating the physical body as such, importing a body-soul dualism foreign to Paul’s actual anthropology (the conflict is between two orientations of the whole person, not matter versus spirit). Separately, 육체의 일 (5:19-21) includes 우상숭배 (idolatry) and 주술 (sorcery/witchcraft) — unlike most items on this vice-list, these two name practices with live, contemporary referents in Korean folk-religious life (shrine veneration; a mudang’s gut-ritual incantation and charm-craft), making this list uniquely present-tense rather than merely ancient-historical for a Korean audience. |
| Recommended strategy | Disambiguate 육체’s two senses by context in every occurrence, with an explicit translator’s note wherever the neutral/moral senses sit close together (2:16, 20). Route every occurrence of 육체의 일 to mandatory Human theologian review; teaching materials must state the contemporary relevance of 우상숭배/주술 explicitly rather than treating the list as a closed historical catalogue. For 성령을 따라 행하라, fence explicitly against any phrasing that could echo shamanistic spirit-channeling/possession dynamics, consistent with the baseline’s holy_spirit forbidden-substitution rule. |
1.12 Fruit of the Spirit
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 성령의 열매 (fruit of the Spirit, new High), 성화 (sanctification, Reused High, background) |
| Weaknesses | The deliberate Greek grammatical singular (“fruit,” not “fruits”) signals one unified, organic outworking rather than nine independently achievable virtues; Korean 열매 can be pluralized or treated as a list without difficulty, creating risk that the doctrine reads as nine self-improvement targets — directly overlapping the baseline’s caution against 수행/도 닦기 (ascetic self-cultivation) framing already flagged under sanctification. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain the singular nominal form 성령의 열매 without pluralizing markers; require teaching prose to state explicitly that this is one Spirit-produced organic reality, not a checklist of nine self-effort achievements. |
1.13 Faith Working through Love
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 사랑으로써 역사하는 믿음 (faith working through love, new High compound), 믿음 (Reused High), 사랑 (love, new Medium) |
| Weaknesses | Korean 사랑 (sarang) is the single general-purpose word spanning romantic, familial, and agapic love; without contextual signaling, it defaults toward romantic/affectionate register in ordinary usage, which could weaken the passage’s self-giving, others-oriented, covenantal sense. The compound formula itself risks being split into two independently-taught virtues (“have faith” + “also love”) rather than translated/taught as one integrated reality — faith’s own active mode of operation. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain the full compound phrase 사랑으로써 역사하는 믿음 as a single unit at 5:6, never abbreviated to either half alone in doctrinal exposition. Require a translator’s note establishing 사랑 here as self-giving, covenantal, others-oriented love, distinguished from romantic/affectionate registers. |
1.14 Bearing One Another’s Burdens
| Element | Detail |
|---|
| Available terms | 짐을 서로 지라 (bear one another’s burdens, new Medium-High), 그리스도의 법 (law of Christ, new Medium-High), 자기의 일을 살피라 (test one’s own work, new Low-Medium), 믿음의 가정 (household of faith, new Medium) |
| Weaknesses | 짐을 서로 지라 is lexically transparent and low-collision on its own, but risks being taught as an isolated ethical maxim disconnected from the letter’s flesh/Spirit and faith/love doctrines that immediately precede it (5:22-25; 5:6) — losing its status as a Spirit-enabled fruit rather than a freestanding moral rule. 믿음의 가정 usefully leverages Korea’s strong family/household cultural framework (가문, 집안) as a bridge metaphor, but risks being read through blood-kinship/clan-lineage obligation logic rather than chosen faith-family belonging. |
| Recommended strategy | Require teaching prose at 6:1-10 to explicitly connect burden-bearing back to 5:22-25’s fruit of the Spirit and 5:6’s faith-working-through-love, presenting this as continuous doctrine rather than a new isolated rule. Clarify 믿음의 가정 as a chosen, faith-based family, not blood/clan obligation, in a translator’s note. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Genuinely Missing Vocabulary (no adequate single Korean equivalent exists)
| Concept | Gap | Mitigation |
|---|
| Singular/plural typological argument (σπέρμα, 3:16, 29) | 자손 does not grammatically mark number the way Greek does, weakening the force of Paul’s “seed, not seeds” argument for Christ as the singular referent. | Mandatory translator’s note explaining the grammatical argument explicitly in surrounding teaching prose; cannot be solved lexically. |
| Greek perfect-tense participatory sense of συνεσταύρωμαι (“crucified with Christ,” 2:20) | Korean verb morphology lacks a direct equivalent for “a past decisive event with continuing present effect” in a single verb form. | Rely on narrative/teaching framing rather than verb-form alone; mandatory translator’s note. |
| ἕτερος vs. ἄλλος distinction (“a different/other” gospel, categorically illegitimate, 1:6) | Korean 다른 does not natively distinguish “a categorically different, illegitimate other” from “one more legitimate alternative,” a distinction Greek marks lexically (ἕτερος vs. ἄλλος, cf. 1:6-7). | Mandatory translator’s note at every occurrence in 1:6-9; consider bolding/emphasis convention in Phase 2 teaching materials to flag the categorical-exclusion sense. |
| παιδαγωγός’s built-in temporariness of authority (3:24-25) | No Korean profession-word carries the paidagōgos’s specific combination of custodial authority + slave status + intrinsically time-limited term; 초등교사 imports a permanent-deference connotation instead. | Mandatory explicit teaching note (see §1.7); cannot be solved lexically without inventing an artificial coinage the baseline discourages. |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Deliberate Fencing
| Korean term/root | Competing semantic neighbor | Fencing required |
|---|
| 복 (root in 복음, 아브라함의 복) | 기복신앙 (shamanistic fortune-seeking faith) | Never allow “gospel” or “blessing of Abraham” teaching to stand without an explicit non-prosperity clarification; this fencing must recur at both 1:6-9 and 3:14, not just once in the document. |
| 의 (righteousness) | 의리 (Confucian loyalty-ethics) | Mandatory distinguishing note at every justification-context occurrence, per baseline; Galatians’ law-works alternative makes the collision more plausible here than in Romans. |
| 저주 (curse, curse of the law, accursed) | Folk-shamanistic curse/misfortune (저주, 액운) removable through gut ritual or exorcistic practice | Teach as the law’s own righteous, judicial verdict resolved only by Christ’s substitutionary curse-bearing (3:13) — never a spiritual affliction addressable by ritual means. |
| 자유 (freedom) | 자유민주주의/정치적 자유 (modern political/civic liberty discourse) | Always pair with the 5:13 “not an opportunity for the flesh” qualifier in surrounding teaching prose; do not let freedom stand as an unqualified rights-claim. |
| 종 (slave) / 양자 (adopted son) / 상속자 (heir) | Confucian household hierarchy; traditional jesa-continuation adoption purpose | Explicit relational-vs-instrumental contrast note required at 4:1-7; track 종 with absolute lexical consistency (§1.8). |
| 초등교사 (guardian/paidagōgos) | Confucian teacher-reverence (스승, 훈장), implying permanent deference | See §1.7 and §2.1; explicit “this authority has now ended” note mandatory. |
| 조상의 유전 (tradition of the fathers) | Jesa (제사) ancestor-rite devotion; the historically fraught Korean Catholic martyrdom-era controversy over ancestor rites | Explicit note that Paul targets his own former zealous rabbinic tradition, not a general verdict on ancestor-honoring; do not let this term silently import the ancestor-rite controversy. |
| 육체 (flesh) | Physical body as such (body-soul dualism risk) | Context-based disambiguation of the two Pauline senses (§1.11) at every occurrence; explicit note wherever neutral and moral senses sit near each other. |
| 우상숭배 / 주술 (idolatry / sorcery, works of the flesh) | Live, continuing Korean folk-religious shrine veneration and mudang gut-ritual practice | Teach as present-tense contemporary categories, not closed ancient-historical ones; mandatory theologian review. |
| 언약 (covenant) / 약속 (promise) | Risk of the two terms collapsing into interchangeable synonyms in translator practice (not a collision with an outside tradition, but an internal-consistency risk unique to ch. 3’s sustained legal argument) | Style-guide rule: never substitute one for the other within Galatians 3’s promise-priority argument. |
| 초등학문 (elemental things of the world) | Korean folk-shamanistic spirit-world (신령/귀신/잡신) if personified | Retain KRV’s “elementary doctrine” reading; never render with any personifying term suggesting literal spirit-beings; mandatory theologian review for any deviation. |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|
| 그리스도 (Christ), 예수 (Jesus), 아멘, 할렐루야 | Transliteration (established KRV forms) | Standard Bible-translation-tradition forms; changing them would fracture cross-curriculum and cross-generational consistency in an already highly Christian-literate context. |
| 아빠 (Abba, 4:6) | Transliteration/near-cognate, not paraphrase | Korean 아빠 is an unusually close phonetic and register match to Aramaic Abba’s intimacy; paraphrasing (e.g., to a purely formal “아버지”) would erase the deliberate informal-intimacy marker Paul preserves untranslated even in Greek. |
| 사도 (apostle), 복음 (gospel), 은혜 (grace), 믿음 (faith), 의 (righteousness), 성령 (Holy Spirit), 하나님 (God) | Established KRV lexical renderings, not transliteration and not free paraphrase | These are load-bearing theological headwords with a settled translation tradition; Phase 2 must reuse them exactly per baseline, never re-derive or re-paraphrase them per document. |
| 초등학문 (elemental things of the world, 4:3, 9) | Paraphrase (“elementary doctrine/teaching”), deliberately avoiding any transliteration or personifying gloss | A transliteration or literal “elemental spirits” rendering would activate Korea’s live folk-shamanistic spirit-world register; KRV’s abstract-doctrine paraphrase is the doctrinally safer choice and must be retained even though it is a slight under-translation of the Greek’s possible personal-power sense. |
| 조상의 유전 (tradition of the fathers, 1:14) | Paraphrase, not transliteration | No single-word Korean equivalent exists; paraphrase is required, but must be accompanied by the disambiguating note in §2.2 given jesa-adjacent vocabulary. |
| 초등교사 (guardian/paidagōgos, 3:24-25) | Paraphrase using an existing KRV compound, not a coined neologism | Coining a new term risks obscuring an already-established KRV reading that Korean readers with high Bible literacy will recognize; the paraphrase’s connotation risk (§1.7) is better solved by explicit teaching notes than by inventing new vocabulary. |
| 다른 복음 (different gospel, 1:6-9) | Paraphrase (KRV standard phrase), not transliteration | The concept requires idiomatic Korean phrasing to carry the categorical-illegitimacy sense (§2.1); transliterating the Greek ἕτερον would be unintelligible and is not the Korean Bible tradition’s practice. |
| 저주를 받을지어다 (anathema, 1:8-9) | Paraphrase (KRV established curse-formula), not transliteration | Korean Bible tradition renders ἀνάθεμα functionally rather than transliterating it; retaining KRV’s established formula preserves recognizability for readers already familiar with it from other NT passages. |
| 새로운 피조물 (new creation, 6:15) | Standardized nominal paraphrase, cross-referenced to 2 Corinthians 5:17 usage | Ensures curriculum-wide consistency now that this pipeline spans multiple books including 2 Corinthians; avoid ad hoc verbal-phrase variants beyond the mandated cross-reference note. |
| 그리스도의 법 (law of Christ, 6:2) | Deliberate paraphrase using 법 rather than the transliteration-adjacent compound 율법 | Preserves Paul’s own deliberate lexical distinction (§1.4); this is the single most consequential paraphrase-vs-reuse decision in the letter’s legal vocabulary. |
4. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Galatians
Ranked by combined doctrinal centrality and collision severity; all Critical/High entries require Human theologian review routing in the forthcoming doctrine risk registry (Step 9/11).
- 은혜 vs. 기복신앙 transactional exchange (2:21; 3:1-5; 5:4) — the letter’s organizing law/grace antithesis is staged at higher frequency and intensity than in Romans; the single highest-stakes term in this entire language pair.
- 율법의 행위 (“works of the law”) vs. 의리-style loyalty-performance (2:16; 3:2, 5, 10) — the specific mechanism by which grace could be reinterpreted as reciprocal, earned favor.
- 주술/우상숭배 (“sorcery”/“idolatry,” 5:20) — the only vocabulary in this curriculum naming currently, actively practiced Korean folk-religious phenomena rather than purely ancient categories; highest real-world pastoral stakes.
- 초등학문 (“elemental things of the world,” 4:3, 9) — direct personification risk into Korea’s live shamanistic spirit-world (신령/귀신/잡신); a wrong rendering here could reinforce, rather than dismantle, the very spiritual bondage Paul describes as abolished.
- 다른 복음 / 저주를 받을지어다 (1:6-9) — the letter’s polemical thesis statement; “다른” must convey categorical illegitimacy, and 아브라함의 복 (3:14) reactivates the 복 fortune-root risk within the same doctrinal unit.
- 그리스도와 함께 십자가에 못 박혔나니 (“crucified with Christ,” 2:19-20) and 육체를 십자가에 못 박았느니라 (5:24) — risk of collapsing a once-for-all judicial reality into ongoing ascetic self-mortification (수행/도 닦기 register).
- 초등교사 (“guardian/paidagōgos,” 3:24-25) — Korean teacher-reverence connotation directly inverts the passage’s logic of an authority that has ended.
- 양자/상속자 (adoption/heir, 4:1-7) — traditional Korean heir-adoption’s jesa-continuation instrumental purpose risks displacing the passage’s relational-belonging point.
- 자유 (freedom, 5:1, 13) — modern political/civic-liberty register risks eclipsing freedom-from-sin’s-condemnation and license-versus-love tension.
- 육체 (flesh) — two senses (2:16, 20 vs. ch. 5) — risk of importing body-soul dualism if the neutral and morally-charged senses are not disambiguated by context.
- 언약/약속 (covenant/promise) synonym-collapse risk (ch. 3) — an internal-consistency risk unique to Galatians’ sustained promise-priority legal argument, not an outside-tradition collision.
- 자손 (seed/offspring) singular/plural argument (3:16, 29) — genuinely missing grammatical resource in Korean; resolvable only through translator notes, never through lexical choice alone.
- 조상의 유전 (tradition of the fathers, 1:14) — jesa-adjacent vocabulary requiring explicit disambiguation given Korean church history’s ancestor-rite martyrdom controversy.
- 사도 elevated apostleship-defense passages (1:1, 11-24; 2:1-10) — lexically stable term, but doctrinal stakes elevated well above baseline Romans usage.
- 사랑으로써 역사하는 믿음 (faith working through love, 5:6) — risk of splitting a unified doctrinal formula into two independently taught virtues, compounded by 사랑’s broad romantic/familial/agapic range.
This analysis extends analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json and must be read alongside the baseline Romans translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and doctrine_risk_registry.json. All Korean renderings recorded here are proposed for formal addition to a Galatians-specific translation memory extension prior to Phase 2 processing, per the baseline’s Translation Memory Load and Enforcement Instructions.