Linguistic Gap Analysis
Linguistic Gap Analysis: Ephesians — English–Maithili
Purpose and Method
This analysis identifies where Maithili’s existing vocabulary stock is (a) genuinely missing a term for a load-bearing Ephesians concept, (b) crowded — i.e. a term exists but is already occupied by a competing devotional, philosophical, or social framework (Vaishnava/Shaiva bhakti, Shakta goddess worship, Tantric-esoteric practice, Ojha exorcism, Panjikaran caste-lineage verification, or dharma-bound household duty) — or (c) available and clean, requiring only consistent enforcement. It builds directly on the baseline Romans translation_memory.json, which already fenced the highest-traffic terms (grace, salvation, righteousness, resurrection, incarnation, saints, power of God, Holy Spirit). Ephesians reuses all of those (Section A of 08_core_glossary.md) but introduces a second wave of collision risk concentrated in three doctrines largely absent or minor in Romans: The Mystery of Christ Revealed, Spiritual Warfare and the Armor of God, and Household Codes and Christ-Centered Relationships. This document maps that terrain for Phase 2 enforcement and reviewer routing.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the nine curriculum doctrines: what Maithili vocabulary is available, what is structurally weak about it, and the recommended handling strategy.
| Doctrine | Available Maithili Terms | Weaknesses of Available Stock | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salvation by Grace through Faith | अनुग्रह (grace), विश्वास (faith), उद्धार (salvation), काज (works), परमेश्वरक उपहार (gift), घमण्ड करब (boast), दया (mercy), मृत (dead), ख्रीष्टक संग जीवित कएल (made alive with Christ) — mostly baseline-inherited | Native vocabulary for “unearned favor” is thin: कृपा/दया/पुण्य/भाग/कर्मफल all carry either devotional-favor, ritual-merit, or karma-transactional overtones. “Works” (कर्म) is the single most theologically loaded common word in the entire Sanskrit-Maithili shared lexicon — avoiding it while still sounding natural is a genuine gap, not just a nuance choice. | Reuse अनुग्रह/विश्वास/उद्धार exactly per baseline; use काज (neutral “deed”) never कर्म for Eph 2:9; maintain the grace→gift→not of works→boast excluded chain as one theologically unified unit requiring joint theologian sign-off (2:8-9 is this letter’s Romans-3:23-equivalent thesis clause). |
| Election and Predestination in Christ | परमेश्वरक चुनाव (election, baseline), बजाओल/बजाओल जाएब (called/calling, baseline) | No existing Maithili religious register cleanly separates “sovereign personal choice by a personal God” from प्रारब्ध/भाग्य/किस्मत (fate) or from a generalized Vaishnava predestination-adjacent idea of निर्धारित भाग्य (ordained lot). This is a genuine structural gap: Maithili everyday speech treats “what is fixed beforehand” as near-synonymous with fate. | New compound पहिनहिं ठहराओल जाएब built on the native passive already established for called/calling — deliberately verbose to avoid collapsing into a single fate-word. Every occurrence flagged Critical, mandatory theologian review, with an explicit note that this is a personal choice, not an impersonal predetermined lot. |
| The Church as the Body of Christ | मण्डली (church, baseline), ख्रीष्टक देह (body of Christ), पवित्र जन (saints, baseline) | Two new images stack on top of the baseline’s already-settled मण्डली≠मन्दिर distinction: ναός (temple/sanctuary) and πλήρωμα (fullness). Neither has a ready-made Maithili equivalent that avoids Hindu temple/shrine framing or a vague abstract-noun flatness. | Introduce पवित्र धाम/निवासस्थान for temple-as-church-body (never मन्दिर) and परिपूर्णता for fullness, both new coinages requiring reviewer sign-off as genuinely new collision points beyond the Romans baseline (see §3 below). |
| Unity of Jews and Gentiles in One New Humanity | अन्यजाति (Gentiles, baseline), व्यवस्था (law, baseline), वाचा (covenant, baseline) | Maithili has a ready religious-social term for circumcision (खतना) but it is functionally a Muslim-practice marker in regional usage, not a neutral OT-covenant-sign term — a genuine crowded-neighborhood gap. “Dividing wall” and “one new man” have no existing idiom at all; these must be built from scratch. | Retain खतना with mandatory clarifying note (OT covenant sign, not Islamic practice); build बैरक बिभाजन-देबाल and एक नब मनुष्य as new full-clause coinages rather than searching for a nonexistent single-word native equivalent. |
| The Mystery of Christ Revealed | भेद (chosen over रहस्य), प्रबन्ध (stewardship), प्रकाशन (revelation) | This is the single deepest genuine vocabulary gap in the letter. Maithili’s most natural word for “mystery/hidden truth” — रहस्य — is already occupied by the region’s living Tantric-esoteric and Nath-yogi siddha tradition (initiate-only secret knowledge, e.g. practices associated with the Ugratara shrine), which is the opposite theological shape of μυστήριον (once hidden, now openly proclaimed to all). No pre-existing Maithili Christian usage settles this the way सुसमाचार or प्रभु already are settled. | Use भेद consistently, but treat it as effectively a coined technical term requiring a distinguishing translator note at every one of its five occurrences (1:9, 3:3-4, 3:6, 3:9, 5:32, 6:19) — higher note-density than any other single term in this curriculum. |
| Spiritual Warfare and the Armor of God | शैतान (devil, transliterated), सामर्थ्य/पराक्रम/बल (power cluster) | This doctrine has almost no vocabulary gap problem and instead a severe crowding problem: Maithili/Hindi religious-epic vocabulary is extremely rich in exactly this semantic space (अस्त्र, कवच, शक्ति, भूत-प्रेत, ओझा/मंत्र) — but every rich option is owned by a competing framework (epic divine weaponry, Shakta goddess power, or living Ojha exorcism practice). | Prefer plain, comparatively “flat” vocabulary (हथियार, सामर्थ्य) over vivid mythologically-loaded alternatives, accepting some loss of rhetorical color in exchange for doctrinal safety; every occurrence in this doctrine cluster requires translator notes distinguishing Pauline spiritual warfare from Ojha ritual counter-magic and epic weapon-lore. |
| Household Codes and Christ-Centered Relationships | अधीन होयब (submit), शिर (head), दास/मालिक (servant/master), प्रभु (reserved for Christ only) | Maithili has abundant native vocabulary for hierarchical household duty (from the same conceptual field as baseline’s rejected कर्तव्य पालन) but comparatively little vocabulary for mutual, Christ-qualified submission — the culture’s default household-relationship vocabulary is asymmetric by design. | Render 5:21’s mutual force and 5:25’s husband-directed self-giving-love qualifier as explicitly as the source text does, resisting the pull toward the region’s default one-directional household vocabulary; treat मालिक/प्रभु disambiguation as non-negotiable (see §5, rank 4). |
| Gifts for Building Up the Church | आत्मिक वरदान (baseline), सुसमाचार प्रचारक, शिक्षक, सुसज्जित करब | Only one real gap: ποιμήν (pastor/shepherd). Literal shepherd vocabulary in this region doubles as a caste-occupational name (Gaderiya/Gadariya), an unusual and specific collision not seen elsewhere in the glossary. | Use रखवार (guardian/keeper) rather than a literal shepherd word for the ministry-office sense; flag for native speaker review to confirm रखवार reads as caring oversight, not merely “watchman.” |
| Walking in Newness of Life | चलब/आचरण करब (walk), परमेश्वरक अनुकरण करएबला (imitators of God), पवित्र आत्मासँ भरल होयब (filled with the Spirit), ज्योतिक सन्तान (children of light) | This doctrine has the highest concentration of crowded-neighborhood risk in the letter: ज्ञान (jñāna-mārga self-liberating knowledge), ज्योति (Puranic/Chhath solar-divine-radiance imagery), भजन (bhakti devotional-song genre), आवेश/संचरण (possession-trance), मूर्तिपूजा (image-worship) all sit directly adjacent to Ephesians vocabulary and cannot simply be avoided — they must be used carefully and fenced. | Retain the proposed core-glossary renderings but require a translator note at nearly every occurrence in this doctrine; this is the doctrine cluster needing the single highest density of fencing notes per verse in the whole book (see §3). |
2. Missing Vocabulary (True Gaps — No Existing Maithili Term at All)
These concepts have no pre-existing single word or settled phrase in Maithili religious or literary registers and must be built as new compounds, following the baseline’s own precedent (e.g. धर्मी घोषित कएल जाएब for “justification”).
| Concept | Gap type | Coined solution | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Predestination (προορίζω) | No neutral personal-sovereign-choice term exists; nearest native words are all fate-vocabulary | पहिनहिं ठहराओल जाएब | Built on baseline’s called/calling passive pattern for family consistency; avoids single fate-word entirely by using a full descriptive clause. |
| Mystery, in the “once-hidden-now-revealed” theological sense (μυστήριον) | Nearest native word (रहस्य) has the opposite semantic shape (initiate-only secrecy) | भेद + mandatory note | No existing term captures “formerly hidden, now openly disclosed to all”; भेद is comparatively neutral but still requires explicit construction of the concept via note. |
| Recapitulation / uniting all things in Christ (ἀνακεφαλαιόω) | No single Maithili word for this cosmic-Christological compound verb exists at all | सब वस्तुकेँ ख्रीष्टक शिरमे एक करब (full clause) | Genuinely novel theological content; rendered descriptively rather than forced into an inadequate single word. |
| Dividing wall of hostility (μεσότοιχον τοῦ φραγμοῦ) | No existing idiom for a demolished social-spiritual barrier | बैरक बिभाजन-देबाल | Coined compound; must not be softened into a vague “difference” word. |
| One new man / new humanity (εἷς καινὸς ἄνθρωπος) | No existing term for a genuinely new corporate identity superseding two prior groups | एक नब मनुष्य | Distinguished in context from 4:22-24’s individual “new self” despite shared root. |
| Fellow heirs / fellow-body-members / fellow-partakers triad (συγκληρονόμα/σύσσωμα/συμμέτοχα) | Greek’s compact “co-” prefix compounding has no single-word Maithili parallel | सहवारिस / देहमे सहभागी / प्रतिज्ञाक सहभागी | The सह- prefix pattern is manually preserved across all three renderings to keep Paul’s rhetorical parallelism visible. |
| Fullness (πλήρωμα), in its dual Christological/ecclesiological sense | No existing abstract noun carries both “that which fills” and “that which is filled” senses together | परिपूर्णता | Coined abstract noun; requires consistency tracking across all three major occurrences (1:23, 3:19, 4:13). |
| Armor of God as a unified set-phrase (πανοπλία τοῦ θεοῷ) | No existing set-phrase names a given, non-mythological, complete defensive equipment set | परमेश्वरक सम्पूर्ण हथियार | Neutral हथियार chosen deliberately over vivid but mythologically loaded अस्त्र/कवच. |
| Grieve the Holy Spirit (λυπεῖν τὸ πνεῦμα) | No existing idiom applies an emotional-relational verb to the Spirit as a person | पवित्र आत्माकेँ दुखी करब | Directly reinforces personhood of the Spirit against impersonal-force readings. |
| Sealed/guarantee of the Spirit (ἐσφραγίσθητε/ἀρραβών) | No existing devotional vocabulary for a Spirit-given “down payment” pledge | मुहर लगाओल गेल / बयाना | बयाना is a live commercial term (earnest money); risks a cold transactional reading if not paired warmly with पवित्र आत्मा (see §5, rank 6). |
3. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Needing Fencing
Unlike the true gaps above, these terms already exist in vigorous, everyday Maithili religious use — the risk is not absence of vocabulary but the presence of a strong, competing meaning that the target audience will supply by default unless a translator note actively “fences” the boundary. Ranked roughly by density/frequency of appearance in Ephesians.
| Maithili term/word-field | Competing framework it belongs to | Ephesians usage at risk | Fencing requirement |
|---|---|---|---|
| रहस्य (rejected in favor of भेद) | Tantric/Nath-yogi esoteric initiate-secrecy tradition (Ugratara shrine) | μυστήριον, 5 occurrences | Never use रहस्य; use भेद with note at every occurrence that this is now-disclosed-to-all truth, the reverse of initiate secrecy. |
| कर्म (rejected in favor of काज) | Karma-causality/rebirth worldview, shared Vaishnava/Shaiva | ἔργα, Eph 2:9 | Never use कर्म in this clause; काज only. This is the doctrine’s single highest-stakes word-choice. |
| मुक्ति / मोक्ष (excluded per baseline) | Liberation-from-rebirth soteriology | σωτηρία throughout | Continue baseline’s absolute prohibition; reinforce given this letter’s dense concentration of salvation-language in 2:1-10. |
| युग | Cyclical yuga cosmology (Satya/Tretā/Dvāpar/Kali) | αἰών, 5 occurrences (1:21, 2:2, 2:7, 3:9, 3:21) — far denser than in Romans | Prefer context-dependent paraphrase (ई संसारक वर्तमान ढाँचा / आबएबला समयसभ); where युग is unavoidable, mandatory note at every occurrence. |
| स्वर्ग | Puranic temporary merit-earned heavenly abode before rebirth | ἐπουράνιος, 4 occurrences | Use स्वर्गीय स्थान, not स्वर्ग alone; note that this names Christ’s present reign/arena of conflict, not a merit-earned way-station. |
| शक्ति | Shakta-goddess power (Durga/Kali/Ugratara) | δύναμις-cluster (1:19, 6:10) and the “powers/authorities” plural (1:21, 3:10, 6:12) | Never use शक्ति for God’s own power (सामर्थ्य only); the ONE controlled exception is its use as a plain plural common noun for hostile spiritual “forces” in the rulers/authorities cluster — flagged explicitly so reviewers do not mistake it for a baseline violation. |
| अस्त्र / कवच | Epic divine-weapon and invincible-armor lore (Brahmastra, Karna’s kavach) | πανοπλία τοῦ θεοῦ, 6:11-17 | Avoid for the summary “armor of God” phrase; use neutral हथियार; permissible only with heavy qualifying notes if used for individual pieces. |
| भूत-प्रेत / ओझा-मंत्र | Living folk exorcism tradition | διάβολος, ἀρχαί/ἐξουσίαι, ἄρχων τῆς ἐξουσίας τοῦ ἀέρος (ch. 2, 6) | Devil/spiritual-powers language must carry a note distinguishing Christ’s armor/prayer/faith-based warfare from Ojha ritual counter-magic; never suggest mantra-style counter-measures are in view. |
| सिद्ध | Nath-yogi/Tantric attained-supernatural-perfection status | τέλειος (“mature manhood,” 4:13) | Never use सिद्ध; use पूर्ण/परिपक्व मनुष्य. |
| ज्ञान | Vedantic jñāna-mārga (knowledge-as-liberation) soteriology | ἐπίγνωσις, “enlightened eyes of the heart” (1:17-18) | Use बुद्धि preferentially; where पूर्ण ज्ञान is used, pair with a note that this is Spirit-given grace-understanding, not self-attained liberating gnosis. |
| ज्योति | Puranic divine-luster imagery; Chhath festival Sūrya (sun) veneration | τέκνα φωτός, “children of light” (5:8) | Note required distinguishing moral-spiritual character from solar veneration/divine radiance. |
| आवेश / संचरण | Regional goddess-worship and Ojha possession-trance practice | πληροῦσθε ἐν πνεύματι, “be filled with the Spirit” (5:18) | Mandatory note: ongoing fruitful yielding to a personal Spirit, not ecstatic trance-possession. |
| भजन | Bhakti devotional-song genre (Krishna/Ram/Shiva bhajans) | ψαλμοῖς καὶ ὕμνοις (5:19) | Likely retainable given wide Christian-hymnody precedent, but pair with a note that the object of praise is Christ specifically. |
| मूर्तिपूजा | The neighboring culture’s own reverent devotional practice | εἰδωλολατρία, applied to covetousness (5:5) | The single most culturally sensitive clause in the book (see §5, rank 1); mandatory theologian-reviewed note on Paul’s comparative rhetorical logic, not a blanket condemnation of the neighboring tradition. |
| खतना | Muslim-associated practice marker in regional North Indian usage | περιτομή (2:11) | Mandatory note clarifying OT Abrahamic covenant sign, unrelated to Islamic custom. |
| गड़ेरिया (rejected) | Shepherd/Gaderiya caste-occupational name | ποιμήν, “pastor” (4:11) | Avoid literal shepherd vocabulary for the ministry-office title; use रखवार. |
| बलि / बलिदान (rejected for Christ’s self-offering) | Shakta goddess-shrine animal-blood sacrifice (e.g. Ugratara) | αἷμα (1:7, 2:13), προσφορὰ καὶ θυσία (5:2) | Use लहू and भेंट आ अर्पण, never बलिदान; note that Christ’s is a self-given, once-for-all act of love, not a favor-petitioning ritual offering. |
| संस्कार / lineage-purity concerns (Panjikaran) | Life-cycle purification rites and caste-lineage verification | ἁγιασμός (5:26), और social-hierarchy passages throughout | Continue baseline’s separation of पवित्रीकरण from संस्कार; extend same caution to the Unity of Jews/Gentiles doctrine’s caste-lineage collision (dividing wall, no partiality). |
| उत्तराधिकार’s crowded neighbor: joint-family ancestral property succession | Hindu joint-family inheritance custom under Panjikaran-linked lineage record-keeping | κληρονομία (1:11, 1:14, 1:18) | Note required marking this as spiritual inheritance in Christ, not physical/ancestral property succession. |
| कर्तव्य पालन (duty-compliance idiom, already rejected in baseline for “obedience of faith”) | Dharma-bound household/marriage duty-compliance ideal | Household code passages generally, and “discipline and instruction of the Lord” (6:4) | Reframe parenting/household relationships as Christ-centered ministry (प्रभुक अनुशासन आ शिक्षा), resisting the pull toward raw duty-transmission framing. |
4. Transliteration vs Paraphrase Decisions
| Decision type | Terms | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Transliterate (established North Indian Bible-tradition form, retained) | यीशु, ख्रीष्ट/मसीह, शैतान, क्रूस, बपतिस्मा, आमीन, हल्लेलूयाह, प्रेरित (Sanskrit tatsama, functionally transliterated register) | These already carry settled Christian-specific meaning across North Indian Bible tradition; substituting native paraphrase would create more ambiguity, not less, by inviting confusion with the region’s own epic/folk equivalents (e.g. a paraphrase of “devil” risks sounding like a named epic villain). |
| Paraphrase as full descriptive clause (reject single-word compression) | προορίζω → पहिनहिं ठहराओल जाएब; ἀνακεφαλαιόω → सब वस्तुकेँ ख्रीष्टक शिरमे एक करब; μεσότοιχον τοῦ φραγμοῦ → बैरक बिभाजन-देबाल; ἀρχαί/ἐξουσίαι/κοσμοκράτορες cluster → the four-part शासक/अधिकारी/… clause | Any single Maithili word compact enough to “fit” these concepts already belongs to a competing framework (fate-vocabulary, epic-weapon vocabulary, caste-hierarchy vocabulary). Full clauses avoid false economy at the cost of some fluency — an acceptable tradeoff given the doctrinal stakes. |
| Retain existing Sanskrit tatsama term but pair with mandatory disambiguating note (neither transliterate anew nor paraphrase away) | भेद (mystery), खतना (circumcision), भजन (psalms/hymns), उत्तराधिकार (inheritance), युग (age, used only where paraphrase is unworkable), स्वर्गीय स्थान (heavenly places) | These words are already fully naturalized in Maithili and a paraphrase would sound foreign or stilted; the risk is not the word’s unfamiliarity but its existing “occupied” meaning, which a note resolves without requiring lexical invention. |
| Coin new compound rather than transliterate the Greek term itself | μυστήριον → भेद (not a transliteration of “mystērion”); πλήρωμα → परिपूर्णता; πανοπλία → परमेश्वरक सम्पूर्ण हथियार | Unlike “baptism” or “amen,” these Greek terms have no precedent transliteration in any existing Maithili Christian usage, and a fresh transliteration would land as pure jargon with zero interpretability; native-morphology coinage is preferred. |
| Human-master vs divine-Lord disambiguation (structural transliteration/paraphrase split within a single Greek root) | κύριος → प्रभु (divine, always) vs κύριοι κατὰ σάρκα → मालिक (human masters, 6:5,9) | Not a transliteration/paraphrase choice per se, but the clearest instance in this letter where one Greek lexical root must be split into two entirely distinct Maithili words to prevent doctrinal blurring; flagged here because it is a recurring, letter-wide discipline requirement, not a single verse’s local choice. |
5. Ranked List of This Letter’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of an unflagged mistranslation reinforcing a specific competing worldview already active in the target culture).
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εἰδωλολατρία applied to covetousness (5:3-5), rendered against मूर्तिपूजा. Highest risk in the entire letter: a careless or unflagged rendering reads as Scripture directly condemning the neighboring Hindu culture’s own reverent devotional practice as a class, rather than conveying Paul’s specific rhetorical point that greed functions as a rival god. Mandatory theologian-reviewed note required at this single verse above all others in the book.
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μυστήριον rendered भेद vs. the live Tantric/Nath-yogi रहस्य framework (1:9; 3:3-4,6,9; 5:32; 6:19). Structurally the deepest true vocabulary gap identified in §2 — the concept has no clean pre-existing Maithili home, and the nearest natural word carries the theologically opposite shape (initiate-secrecy vs. now-disclosed-to-all). Five occurrences, each requiring its own note; cumulative risk across the letter is very high even though no single occurrence is as acute as rank 1.
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προορίζω / predestination rendered पहिनहिं ठहराओल जाएब vs. प्रारब्ध/भाग्य/किस्मत fatalism (1:5, 1:11). Everyday Maithili religious speech treats “determined beforehand” as near-synonymous with fate; this is the doctrine most likely to be silently re-interpreted by native readers even when the “correct” words are used, because the surrounding cultural framework supplies the fatalistic reading by default. Compounded by 1:11’s pairing with providence language.
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Mutual submission (5:21) collapsing into one-directional wife-only submission (5:22-24), given the region’s patriarchal household-duty default. Even a lexically perfect रendering of अधीन होयब risks being read through the region’s existing hierarchical household-duty grammar unless 5:21’s mutuality and 5:25’s husband-directed self-giving-love qualifier are both given full rhetorical weight; this is a discourse-level risk, not merely a word-level one, and is harder to catch in segment-by-segment Phase 2 review than single-term risks.
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Rulers/authorities/cosmic-powers cluster (1:21, 3:10, 6:12) vs. the living Ojha exorcism/bhoot-pret tradition. Unlike Romans, which mentions spiritual powers only in passing, Ephesians makes organized hostile spiritual authority a sustained structural theme (armor of God, ch. 6). Reader-supplied folk categories (ghosts requiring mantra-counter-measures) are readily available and will fill in wherever the text is under-specified; the controlled शक्ति exception (§3) compounds this risk by requiring reviewers to distinguish a deliberate, narrow exception from a baseline violation.
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“Sealed… guarantee” (ἐσφραγίσθητε/ἀρραβών, 1:13-14) rendered with the commercial term बयाना. A subtler risk: not a competing religious framework but a competing register — बयाना’s everyday meaning is a cash earnest-payment in a property or marriage transaction. Left unpaired with warm relational framing, the Spirit’s presence in the believer risks sounding like a financial instrument rather than a personal pledge, undercutting Ephesians’ otherwise deeply relational Trinitarian language.
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αἰών (“age”) vs. Puranic युग cosmology, at unusually high density (5 occurrences: 1:21, 2:2, 2:7, 3:9, 3:21). Individually medium risk per occurrence (as in Romans), but Ephesians’ far denser recurrence multiplies cumulative exposure; a reviewer who successfully flags 1:21 may fatigue and miss the note requirement at 3:9 or 3:21.
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πανοπλία τοῦ θεοῦ vs. epic अस्त्र/कवच imagery (6:11-17), across six itemized pieces. High individual-word risk compounded by length of exposure (a full paragraph of sustained military-spiritual metaphor), during which the temptation to reach for more vivid, culturally resonant — but mythologically loaded — vocabulary is strongest for a translator seeking naturalness.
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ναός/κατοικητήριον (“holy temple,” 2:21-22) reopening the baseline’s settled मण्डली≠मन्दिर line via a different Greek word. Because the baseline only forbade मन्दिर for ἐκκλησία, a translator working quickly might not recognize that this different Greek term for the same referent (the church-as-body) creates a fresh occasion for the same forbidden substitution to creep back in through a side door.
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κύριος split between प्रभु (divine) and मालिक (human masters, 6:5-9). Mechanically well-specified in the registry, but the density of “lord/master” vocabulary in a five-verse span makes this a high-frequency point of possible slippage during batch Phase 2 processing; recommend an automated string-check in addition to human review.
Summary for Phase 2 Enforcement
- Highest note-density doctrines: The Mystery of Christ Revealed and Walking in Newness of Life require translator notes at nearly every occurrence of their key terms — budget reviewer time accordingly.
- Genuinely new vocabulary gaps (§2) should be treated as provisional coinages pending Phase 2 theologian confirmation, not yet as settled translation-memory entries; recommend a dedicated theologian sign-off pass before these enter the updated
translation_memory.jsonas Ephesians extensions. - Crowded-neighborhood terms (§3) are not translation errors waiting to happen at the word-selection stage (the correct word has usually already been identified) — the risk is almost entirely in whether the mandatory disambiguating note survives into the final segment cache and reviewer packet. Phase 2 tooling should treat “note present” as a hard validation gate for every term in §3, parallel to the existing forbidden-substitution checklist.
- This document should be read together with
08_core_glossary.md(term inventory) and will feed directly into the doctrine risk registry extension and the updated AI translation requirements for this curriculum.