Executive Summary — Acts 1–28, English → Kurdish (Kurmanji)

Why it matters

Acts is the most doctrinally dense book yet translated in this pipeline for Kurdish: it is the resurrection-saturated, Spirit-saturated hinge narrative that moves the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, and it lands on an audience carrying more distinct, load-bearing religious and political frameworks — mainstream Sunni Islam, Sufi mysticism, Yazidism, Yarsanism, Alevism, and a century of stateless-nation political vocabulary — than any prior language in this series. The core passage, Acts 2:1-41 (Pentecost), alone triggers 13 of this package’s Critical- or High-risk terms in a single 41-verse unit. Getting this book wrong risks either flattening its most distinctive claims (bodily resurrection, exclusive Lordship, Spirit-granted repentance) into safer regional equivalents, or triggering serious, avoidable offense (circumcision, martyrdom vocabulary) that has nothing to do with the theological point being made.

Key findings

• 96 total glossary terms now govern Acts translation: 47 inherited unchanged from the Romans baseline package, plus 49 new terms introduced by Acts’ full-book survey (chapters 1–28, no chapter silently skipped).
• 61 of those 96 terms (27 Critical + 34 High) require mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence — roughly two-thirds of the entire glossary, driven by Acts’ persecution narratives, the Pentecost/Spirit doctrine, and the Jew-Gentile/Jerusalem Council material.
• At the doctrine level, 27 of Acts’ 34 identified doctrines (14 Critical + 13 High) route to mandatory human theologian review; 6 Medium-risk doctrines route to native speaker review; 1 Low-risk doctrine (Christian self-designation) is automated-review-only.
• Two entirely new Critical-risk collision points not present in the Romans baseline emerge from Acts specifically: the Şahid/Şehîd (witness/martyr) pairing, which shares its root with Kurdish national-political martyrdom vocabulary; and Sinet (circumcision), a cherished, near-universal Islamic-cultural rite of passage for Kurdish boys that the Jerusalem Council’s ruling must never be allowed to appear to comment on or challenge.
• The book’s kingdom-of-God inclusio (Acts 1:6-8 opening, 28:31 closing) gives Kurdish translators their clearest built-in teaching opportunity: the disciples themselves ask about restoring a national kingdom, and Jesus redirects them to spiritual mission — the same redirection this whole Language Package requires of every Kingdom-of-God and Rizgarî occurrence.

Risks

• Highest-severity risk: Şahid/Şehîd drift. If gospel martyrdom (Stephen, ch. 7 onward) is rendered or received as parallel to, rather than categorically distinct from, Peshmerga/PKK political martyrdom, Acts’ missionary theology is recast as national-liberation ideology.
• Compounding risk: Rizgarî (salvation) and Padîşahiya Xwedê (kingdom of God) both carry independent Critical political-nationalist risk from the Romans baseline; Acts combines them at its two structurally most visible points (1:6-8 and 28:31), doubling the consequence of any single anchoring failure.
• Cultural-offense risk: Sinet (circumcision) is lexically correct and unavoidable, but the Jerusalem Council narrative (Acts 15) requires the tightest cultural-sensitivity fencing in the curriculum — the doctrinal point and the everyday cultural practice must never appear to touch.
• Structural political risk: the “all things in common” description (2:44-45, 4:32-35), combined with “hevaltî’s” secular leftist “comrade” resonance, risks the earliest church being read as scriptural endorsement of a 20th-century Kurdish socialist/communist political program.
• Inverted risk: the ascension (1:9-11) is the one doctrine in this package where the regional default is over-acceptance, not rejection — mainstream Islam already affirms a bodily ascension, so it must always be paired with the prior death and resurrection it presupposes.

Opportunities

• The tongues miracle (Acts 2:4-11) offers a genuine, positive pastoral asset: hearing God’s wonders in one’s own mother tongue resonates powerfully with Kurdish linguistic-suppression history, provided the emphasis stays on the gospel’s reach to every nation rather than a claim about Kurdish specifically.
• The Medes’ explicit presence in the Pentecost nation list (2:9) is an unplanned, striking point of contact with Kurdish nationalist historiography’s claimed descent from the ancient Medes, usable pastorally without overstating a claim the text itself does not make.
• The Areopagus “unknown god” bridge (17:23) and the Lystra idol episode (14:11-18) model a transferable apologetic method for engaging Sufi, Yazidi, Alevi, and Yarsani frameworks respectfully while still landing on Christ’s exclusive claims.
• Acts 1:6-8’s redirection of the disciples’ own nationalist-political question into spiritual mission is a ready-made, textually explicit teaching tool for defusing the Kingdom-of-God/Rizgarî political-conflation risk that recurs throughout this entire Language Package.

Recommended actions

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, and assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json (Acts) alongside the full Romans baseline before any Phase 2 segment processing begins.
2. Enforce the Şahid/Şehîd boundary (Acts 7:59-60 as the transition point) and its mandatory disclaimer footnote as a non-negotiable, theologian-reviewed gate — treat any drift here as a blocking issue, not a stylistic note.
3. Process and finalize the Acts 2:1-41 core-passage segment batch first, before any dependent chapter (3, 4, 10, 11, 13, 15, 19, 28) that quotes or echoes it, to prevent downstream terminology rework.
4. Route all 27 Critical/High doctrines and the 61 Critical/High terms to mandatory human theologian review per analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md’s escalation rules; do not allow native-speaker-only review to substitute for theologian review on any of these.
5. Brief all reviewers explicitly on the Sinet (circumcision) sensitivity boundary before Acts 15/16:3 material enters the review queue, given the disproportionate offense risk relative to the doctrinal content at stake.