Linguistic Gap Analysis: Acts 1–28 (English–Malay)
Purpose and Method
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Acts curriculum. It identifies where standard Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) either (a) lacks a clean, doctrinally-safe equivalent for a Greek/theological concept (“missing vocabulary”), or (b) has an available term that already carries strong, competing meaning from Islam, from Malay folk-animist practice, or from Malaysia’s specific civil/legal-administrative vocabulary (“crowded semantic neighborhood” requiring a fencing strategy). It also records where transliteration is preferred over paraphrase (and vice versa), and ranks this curriculum’s highest-risk ambiguities for review-routing priority.
This analysis extends, and does not contradict, the Romans-baseline translation_memory.json. All Section-A terms in analysis/08_core_glossary.md are reused exactly as recorded there; this document explains why the Acts-specific terms in Section B were assigned their risk tiers and Malay renderings, and surfaces cross-chapter patterns the glossary format does not foreground.
Full-book coverage note: All 28 chapters of Acts have been reviewed. Chapters not separately discussed below (3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28) are addressed either in the Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix (§1), the Crowded Neighborhoods table (§2), or — for the two chapters contributing no new load-bearing vocabulary beyond material already covered — explicitly noted in §5.
1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
The matrix below covers the nine curriculum doctrines named in the project brief. For each: the available Malay term(s), the specific weaknesses/collision risks, and the recommended handling strategy for Phase 2.
1.1 The Holy Spirit and Pentecost
| Available Malay Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| Roh Kudus (baseline, Critical) | (1) Sunni commentary tradition glosses “Ruh al-Qudus” as the archangel Jibril aiding Isa, not a co-equal Person; (2) traditional Malay animism recognizes many roh (ancestor spirits, nature spirits, jin), risking Roh Kudus being heard as one spirit-being among many. | Reuse baseline term exactly. In every Acts occurrence where the Spirit acts with will, speech, or personal reaction (5:3 “lie to the Holy Spirit,” 7:51 “you always resist,” 13:2 “the Holy Spirit said”), retain first-person/agentive grammar in Malay rather than passive/impersonal constructions, to reinforce personhood against both collision risks simultaneously. |
| Dipenuhi dengan Roh Kudus (NEW, High) | Malay bomoh spirit-mediumship practice includes a recognizable “filled/entered by a spirit” (kerasukan) phenomenology; risk of the biblical filling being assimilated to that trance-possession frame. | Always pair with a result clause (bold witness, praise, prophetic speech) so the fruit of filling is visibly Spirit-honoring proclamation, not trance state; teach explicitly that this is repeatable empowering (2:4; 4:8; 4:31; 13:9), not a single ecstatic event. |
| Bahasa-bahasa lain (NEW, High) | Regional spirit-medium practice includes ecstatic/glossolalic-sounding utterance; risk of conflating Pentecost’s tongues with that phenomenon, or of importing later, distinct charismatic-tongues debate categories not in view in Acts 2. | Render with vocabulary that clearly denotes real, known human languages (bahasa yang nyata/dikenali), anchored to v.6–11’s hearer-recognition detail (masing-masing mendengar dalam bahasa ibundanya sendiri). |
| Hari-hari akhir / zaman akhir (NEW, High) | Heavily populated Malay-Muslim eschatological field (Imam Mahdi, Dajjal, kembalinya Nabi Isa); risk of Peter’s Joel-citation being heard as referencing that specific end-time script. | Teach explicitly as an already-inaugurated era beginning at Pentecost (sudah bermula), contrasted with the still-future countdown framing dominant in popular Malay-Muslim eschatology. |
| Bernubuat (NEW, High) | Islamic nubuwwah (the prophetic office) is formally closed and exclusively male, sealed with Muhammad; Joel’s “sons and daughters… menservants and maidservants” prophesying is structurally incompatible with that closed office. | Frame explicitly as Spirit-empowered proclamation available to all believers regardless of gender or social status, distinct in kind from the OT/Islamic prophetic office (Nabi) discussed elsewhere in the same sermon. |
1.2 The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles
| Available Malay Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| Bangsa bukan Yahudi (baseline, Medium) | None new beyond baseline; ethnically neutral, established. | Reuse exactly across chs. 10, 11, 13, 15, 28. |
| Najis / tidak tahir (NEW, Critical) | Malaysia operates a live, state-administered halal certification regime (JAKIM); haram/halal vocabulary would import that operating system directly into Peter’s vision text. | Never use haram/halal. Use najis/tidak tahir with explicit accompanying teaching distinguishing Mosaic ceremonial law (the actual referent) from the contemporary Islamic dietary-legal category (an unrelated system). |
| Allah tidak memandang bulu (NEW, Medium) | None significant; a plain idiom. | Render forcefully and without hedging (10:34) — this is the doctrinal hinge of the whole Cornelius narrative. |
| Sunat / Berkhitan (NEW, High) | Khitan is a widely and positively practiced Malay-Islamic-cultural rite; risk of Acts 15’s circumcision debate being heard as a polemic against that rite rather than a historically-bounded Mosaic covenant-sign question. | Frame strictly as “must Gentile converts undergo the Mosaic covenant sign to be saved” (15:1, 15:5), resolved by grace alone (15:11); never comment on or imply anything about the independently-arising Islamic practice. |
| Kristian / orang Kristian (NEW, Medium) | Malaysian constitutional and popular usage fuses Malay ethnicity with Islam; the Kristian label can feel, to Malay-background converts, like abandoning ethnic identity itself. | Teach identity as rooted in union with Christ (11:26, 26:28), addressing the real social cost directly rather than minimizing it. |
1.3 Repentance and Baptism
| Available Malay Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| Bertobat / Pertobatan (NEW, High) | Shares root with Islamic taubat — a well-developed doctrine of turning back to Allah through sincere remorse, restitution, and renewed obedience, in which human effort functions as (partly) meritorious. | Always name the object explicitly: turning toward faith in the crucified and risen Yesus Kristus (2:38, 3:19, 17:30, 26:20), not a self-generated act of moral restitution that itself earns forgiveness. |
| Baptisan / Dibaptis / Berbaptis (NEW, High) | Genuine cultural advantage: phonetically transparent, not Islamic-vocabulary-derived. Doctrinal risk is baptism being read as itself the meritorious cause of forgiveness (a “Malay wudhu’” reading), or being flattened to ritual ablution. | Teach as a public response to grace already given through repentance/faith (2:38, 16:31, 22:16), never the forgiveness-causing act; explicitly distinguish from wudhu’ ritual purification for prayer. |
| Kesyukuran / forgiveness-of-sins pairing (baseline reuse, Dosa High) | Islamic anthropology (fitrah) resists inherited/universal guilt; low collision on the word Dosa itself, higher collision on the doctrine it names. | Continue baseline handling: teach “forgiveness of sins” (2:38) as addressing real, personal, and universal moral debt before a personal God. |
| Available Malay Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| Persekutuan (baseline, Low) | None new; established term, low collision. | Reuse exactly at 2:42, the doctrine’s anchor verse. |
| Memecahkan roti (NEW, Medium) | Dual reference (ordinary meal + commemorative meal) not sharply differentiated at this early narrative stage. | Preserve the ambiguity deliberately; do not over-specify a fixed liturgical sacrament not yet clearly established in the text (2:42, 2:46, 20:7, 20:11). |
| Segala kepunyaan mereka menjadi kepunyaan bersama (NEW, Medium) | Risk of being heard through either a modern communist-ideology lens or the Islamic zakat (obligatory, formula-based almsgiving) lens. | Teach as voluntary, Spirit-motivated generosity specific to the early Jerusalem community (2:44-45, 4:32-35), not a universal command nor a religious legal duty. |
| Gereja (baseline, Medium) | Distinct from a state-recognized religious institution under Malaysia’s civil/Syariah dual jurisdiction. | Reuse exactly (20:28); keep institutional/legal-status questions out of the doctrinal content. |
| Pelayan jemaah / diaken; Penatua; Penilik jemaah (NEW, Medium) | Risk of conflation with Islamic religious-leadership titles (imam, ustaz, tok guru), which carry different institutional/educational connotations in Malaysia. | Teach as distinct NT governance offices (ch. 6; 14:23; 20:17,28) with their own qualification criteria, not analogues of the Islamic titles. |
1.5 Apostolic Authority and Miracles
| Available Malay Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| Rasul (baseline, High) | Rasul is also the specific, exclusive Islamic category for a major scripture-bearing prophet-messenger (preeminently Muhammad, Rasulullah). | Reuse baseline term exactly; always accompany with 1:21-22’s eyewitness-to-the-risen-Christ qualification criterion as the distinguishing content. |
| Tanda dan mukjizat (NEW, High) | Mukjizat in standard Malay/Indonesian Islamic usage denotes miracles authenticating a prophet’s office — a closed category (preeminently the Qur’an as Muhammad’s own mu’jizat). | Retain mukjizat (most natural, recognizable word) but never without accompanying teaching distinguishing apostolic Spirit-authentication (2:43; 3:1-10; 5:12-16; 14:3; 19:11-12) from Islamic nabi/rasul prophethood authentication. |
| Mengasingkan / diasingkan (NEW, High) | Could be misread through a Sufi ascetic-withdrawal lens. | Teach as a specific, Spirit-initiated, bounded missionary commissioning (13:2), directly continuous with Paulus’s self-description in Roma 1:1. |
| Sihir (NEW, High) | Connects to the existing baseline caution re: bomoh shamanic practice as a live cultural substrate. | Teach as exposed, counterfeit power decisively defeated (chs. 8, 13), never a comparable alternative power source to Kuasa Allah. |
1.6 Persecution and Bold Witness
| Available Malay Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| Saksi (NEW, High) | Programmatic term (1:8); must never be associated with syahid. | Render saksi consistently in the eyewitness-testimony sense throughout; reserve descriptive phrasing for the distinct “died while testifying” sense (below). |
| Mati sebagai saksi / kesaksian sehingga mati (NEW, High, descriptive phrase not a loanword) | Syahid in Islamic theology is a specific, formally-taught category tied to dying in armed jihad, guaranteeing direct entry to paradise. | Never use syahid as a single-word substitute for Stephen’s death (7:54-60). Always use the descriptive phrase; this is the single clearest Acts-specific forbidden-substitution case. |
| Keberanian / dengan yakin dan terus terang (NEW, High) | Risk of being flattened to natural boldness/assertiveness rather than Spirit-given confidence under real threat. | Render consistently across all occurrences (4:13, 4:29, 4:31, 9:27-28, 13:46, 14:3, 18:26, 19:8, 26:26, 28:31) as Spirit-given, not a personality trait. |
| Merajam / melontar batu (NEW, High) | Merajam carries strong contemporary association with hudud, an actively debated Islamic criminal-law penalty in Malaysia’s dual legal system. | Frame explicitly and consistently as illegitimate mob violence without proper judicial process (7:58-60; 14:19), never as commentary on the contemporary legal-political debate. |
1.7 Conversion of Paul
| Available Malay Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| Penglihatan syurgawi / cahaya dari langit (NEW, Low) | Low collision; descriptive theophany language. | Render straightforwardly (9:3-9; 22:6-11; 26:13-18). |
| Anak Allah (baseline, Critical) | Central tawhid collision; global “Son of God” translation controversy. | Reuse exactly. Acts 9:20 is a load-bearing text: this is the first content of Saul/Paul’s own post-conversion preaching — a strong teaching opportunity that the earliest apostolic proclamation itself made this exact, non-negotiable claim. |
| Jalan Tuhan / Jalan itu (NEW, High) | Resonates with As-Sirat al-Mustaqim, the Straight Path recited daily in Al-Fatihah; risk of “the Way” being heard primarily as a code of law/ritual observance. | Teach as relational, personal following of and union with Yesus Kristus specifically (9:2; 22:4; 24:14); may also be used carefully as a respectful cultural bridge point once the relational distinction is made clear. |
| Kuasa Iblis / Syaitan (NEW, High) | Broadly intelligible but risks assumed equivalence with Islamic angelology/demonology’s more elaborate, ranked hierarchy. | Teach the NT’s cosmic light-versus-darkness conflict framework, decisively resolved through Christ’s victory (26:18), without assuming full doctrinal correspondence. |
1.8 Justification apart from the Law
| Available Malay Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| Diperbenarkan (baseline, Critical) | Must retain full forensic-declaration weight; never softened to mere forgiveness. | Reuse exactly. Acts 13:38-39 is this curriculum’s clearest single “justification apart from the law” text in the whole book — treat as the anchor verse for this doctrine, parallel to Romans 3-4. |
| Hukum Taurat (baseline, High) | Never Syariah — an operative, currently-functioning parallel legal court system for Muslims in Malaysia, not merely an abstract theological category. | Reuse exactly; central at 13:38-39 and throughout ch. 15’s Jerusalem Council debate. |
| Kuk (NEW, Medium) | Low collision; vivid burden metaphor. | Preserve the image intact at 15:10, reinforcing the argument against re-imposing law as a salvation condition. |
| Kebenaran yang diperhitungkan (baseline, Critical) | Kebenaran yang diusahakan (earned righteousness) remains explicitly rejected. | Reuse exactly; underlies 13:38-39’s argument alongside Diperbenarkan. |
| Yang Benar (NEW, High) | Applies Kebenaran directly to Christ as a title (22:14), distinct from believers’ imputed righteousness. | Teach the dual usage explicitly so learners do not confuse Christ’s own inherent righteousness with the credited righteousness believers receive. |
1.9 The Great Commission Fulfilled
| Available Malay Term(s) | Weaknesses | Recommended Strategy |
|---|
| Penyebaran Injil (baseline, High) | Misi carries colonial-missionary baggage in Malaysian public discourse; dakwah is the specifically Islamic outreach term. | Reuse exactly. Acts 1:8 (“you will be my witnesses… to the end of the earth”) is the programmatic thesis for the whole book, fulfilled structurally at 28:31 — treat these two verses as bookends requiring identical, consistent rendering. |
| Kerajaan Allah (baseline, Medium) | Kerajaan doubles as Malaysia’s ordinary word for “government”; the disciples’ own politically-loaded misreading (1:6, “will you restore the kingdom to Israel”) mirrors this exact risk inside the text itself. | Reuse exactly; the 1:6 misunderstanding can be used pedagogically as a built-in illustration of the very collision risk this Language Package flags. |
| Evangelism/proclamation language (10:14-15 field; ch. 10:14-15, 15:20 in Romans baseline; Acts 10:14-15 equivalent) | Proselytizing Muslims is legally restricted in Malaysia under state Islamic administration enactments. | Keep translation focused strictly on the biblical text’s own content; do not add or imply real-world proselytizing instructions; route to human theologian review for pastoral/legal-safety framing, consistent with baseline mission-doctrine handling. |
2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
2.1 Missing Vocabulary (no clean existing Malay term; requires constructed/compound rendering)
| Concept | Gap | Constructed Malay Solution | Chapters |
|---|
| Determinate counsel and foreknowledge (a single Greek clause holding sovereignty + human guilt together) | No single Malay word captures both divine sovereign planning and simultaneous human moral culpability without collapsing into fatalism. | Compound phrase: rancangan dan pengetahuan Allah yang ditetapkan lebih dahulu — deliberately verbose to resist a one-word takdir-style shorthand. | 2 |
| Martyrdom (the developing “died while testifying” sense of martys) | No safe single Malay/loan word exists; the only available loanword (syahid) carries a specific, wrong doctrinal payload. | Descriptive phrase only: mati sebagai saksi / kesaksian sehingga mati. Never lexicalize into a single term. | 7, 22 |
| ”God-fearer” as a sociological category (Gentile synagogue-adjacent worshipper, not yet a full convert) | Malay has no established single term for this intermediate status. | Descriptive phrase: orang yang takut akan Allah (retaining the Semitic idiom literally) alongside orang yang saleh. | 10 |
| Prosōpolēmptēs (impartiality as a compound moral-theological claim about God’s character) | No single native Malay theological term; existing idiom is colloquial. | Idiom retained plainly: Allah tidak memandang bulu / tidak berat sebelah — colloquial but doctrinally forceful; do not over-formalize into stiffer bureaucratic Malay, which would lose its force. | 10 |
| Divination spirit (a specific oracular-spirit category with no exact Malay folk-category match) | Malay ilmu ghaib/bomoh vocabulary has no precise one-to-one equivalent for a pythagainst-style oracular possession-for-profit spirit. | Descriptive compound: roh tenungan / roh peramal, explicitly distinguished from Roh Kudus and from the broader ilmu ghaib category rather than borrowing a single existing folk term. | 16 |
2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (existing Malay term already “occupied” by a competing concept; requires fencing)
| Malay Term/Field | Competing Occupant | Fencing Strategy |
|---|
| Rasul | Islamic rasul (scripture-bearing major prophet-messenger, preeminently Muhammad) | Retain established Alkitab word (no substitute exists); fence with mandatory accompanying teaching on 1:21-22’s eyewitness-of-the-resurrection criterion every time the term appears in a doctrinally load-bearing context. |
| Nabi | Islamic Nabi (closed prophetic office) | Fence by explicitly distinguishing OT prophets cited as pointing forward to Christ (Joel, 2:16; Isaiah, 28:25-27) from the different, Spirit-democratized “bernubuat” of 2:17-18, and both from Christ’s own greater identity. |
| Mukjizat | Islamic mu’jizat (prophet-authenticating miracle, closed category) | Fence by always pairing with “tanda” (sign) and explicit teaching that apostolic signs authenticate apostolic authority/resurrection testimony, not new scripture-bearing prophethood. |
| Bertobat / Pertobatan | Islamic taubat (effort-inclusive turning, restitution, renewed obedience as partly meritorious) | Fence by always naming the object of turning (toward faith in Yesus Kristus) explicitly in the same sentence or immediate teaching note; never let “bertobat” stand doctrinally alone. |
| Jalan Tuhan / Jalan itu | As-Sirat al-Mustaqim (the Straight Path, Al-Fatihah) | Fence by consistently framing as relational following of Christ’s person, not a legal/ritual code; usable as a bridge only after this distinction is explicitly taught. |
| Sunat / Berkhitan | Khitan (positively-practiced Malay-Islamic cultural rite) | Fence by restricting all discussion to the bounded historical Mosaic covenant-sign debate (ch. 15); never comment on or imply anything about the Islamic practice itself. |
| Merajam | Hudud stoning penalty (active Malaysian legal-political debate) | Fence by explicit narrative framing as illegitimate, extrajudicial mob violence, never legitimate judicial process. |
| Aliran (chosen over Mazhab) | Mazhab (the four recognized Sunni jurisprudential schools) | Avoid Mazhab entirely for hairesis (24:14); Aliran (“stream/movement”) sidesteps the legal-school association. |
| Syahid (forbidden) | Islamic martyrdom-in-jihad category guaranteeing paradise | Never use; substitute descriptive phrasing (see §2.1 above). |
| Haram / Halal (forbidden) | Malaysia’s live, state-administered JAKIM halal certification system | Never use for Acts 10’s koinon/akatharton; substitute najis/tidak tahir. |
| Takdir (forbidden, carried over from baseline) | Popular Malay fatalistic-decree usage | Never use for determinate counsel (2:23), providence (2:23, ch.27), or election (13:48); use the established Pemeliharaan Allah / Pilihan Allah / the constructed compound in §2.1. |
| Nazar | Islamic nazar (a vow of religious performance conditioned on request being granted) | Fence by teaching Paul’s vow (21:23-24) as cultural-sensitivity/freedom, not a meritorious-for-salvation act. |
| Warak (avoided) | Arabic-Islamic-register ritual-scrupulousness term | Avoid for eulabēs/eusebēs/phoboumenos ton theon (2:5, 10:2); use “orang yang saleh / orang yang takut akan Allah” instead, and clarify piety is not itself the meritorious ground of standing before God. |
| Ilmu ghaib / bomoh field | Traditional Malay occult/shamanic practice substrate | Fence Sihir (chs. 8, 13, 19), Roh tenungan (ch. 16), and Menumpangkan tangan (chs. 8, 19) all against this same substrate — each must be taught as either counterfeit/defeated power or Spirit-attributed efficacy, never comparable folk-power categories. |
| Jin | Islamic cosmology’s morally-mixed spirit category (includes reportedly-converting jin, Qur’an 72) | Fence Roh jahat (ch. 19) as unambiguously malevolent and decisively defeated by Christ’s name — do not let it be read as one member of the broader, morally-ambiguous jin category. |
| Kristian | Constitutional/popular fusion of Malay ethnicity with Islam | Fence by teaching identity rooted in union with Christ (11:26; 26:28), directly naming the real social cost some Malay-background believers associate with the label rather than minimizing it. |
| Kerajaan (Allah) | Ordinary modern Malay word for “government” (Kerajaan Malaysia) | Fence identically to the Romans baseline; the disciples’ own 1:6 political misreading provides a built-in teaching illustration. |
3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Item | Decision | Rationale |
|---|
| Pentakosta | Transliterate | Established Alkitab proper-noun convention; tie to OT Feast of Weeks (Hari Raya Tujuh Minggu) in teaching notes, not in the term itself. |
| Yesus / Kristus | Transliterate (established Alkitab forms) | Never Isa/Al-Masih, per baseline convention; prevents Insider-Movement-style vocabulary drift. |
| Abba | Retain untransliterated (as in baseline) | No Acts occurrence, but consistency rule carried forward for any cross-referenced Romans 8:15 citation in Acts teaching material. |
| Zeus / Hermes | Transliterate | Proper names of Greco-Roman deities (14:12); do not substitute a local Malay/animist deity name, which would import an unrelated religious system. |
| Amin / Haleluya | Transliterate (established forms) | Per baseline convention. |
| ”The Way” (hē hodos) | Paraphrase (Jalan Tuhan / Jalan itu), not a single-word transliteration | No Greek loanword tradition exists in Malay for this; a descriptive phrase allows the relational-following sense to be taught, whereas a bare transliteration would carry no meaning at all. |
| Martyrdom (developing sense of martys) | Paraphrase only — explicitly NOT a loanword | Syahid is the only available single-word loan candidate and it carries the wrong (Islamic jihad-death) doctrinal payload; must remain a multi-word descriptive phrase to prevent lexicalization into a false shortcut. |
| Divination spirit (pneuma pythōna) | Paraphrase (roh tenungan / roh peramal) | No exact single Malay folk-term correspondence exists; paraphrase allows explicit distinction from Roh Kudus to be built into the rendering itself. |
| Unclean/common (koinon/akatharton) | Paraphrase (najis / tidak tahir), NEVER transliterate/adopt haram-halal register | Existing Arabic-loan halal/haram vocabulary is not a paraphrase option here — it is a forbidden substitution precisely because it is a live, operating legal category, not merely a lexical option. |
| Determinate counsel and foreknowledge | Paraphrase (full compound clause) | No single Malay term exists; deliberate verbosity itself functions as a safeguard against takdir-style compression. |
| Deacon / Elder / Overseer | Paraphrase using descriptive compounds (pelayan jemaah/diaken; penatua; penilik jemaah) rather than borrowing Islamic leadership titles | Prevents false-equivalence with imam/ustaz/tok guru, which carry different institutional and educational connotations. |
| Sect/party (hairesis) | Paraphrase using Aliran, deliberately avoiding the more natural-sounding loanword Mazhab | Mazhab’s specific Sunni-jurisprudence meaning would misleadingly suggest early Christianity was a legal variant within Judaism’s own framework. |
4. Ranked List of This Book’s Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined doctrinal severity, collision specificity, and likelihood of silent mistranslation in Phase 2 if not explicitly flagged. This ranking drives review-routing priority within the Critical/High tier, not a replacement for the tier assignments themselves.
- Unclean/common → haram/halal substitution risk (Acts 10:14, 10:28). Critical. Uniquely dangerous because the wrong rendering is not merely doctrinally imprecise but imports a currently operating, state-administered legal-certification system (JAKIM) into the text — the clearest real-world legal/administrative collision in the whole book.
- Son of God / Sonship of Christ (Acts 9:20). Critical. The single most direct tawhid collision, now sharpened by being the first recorded content of Paul’s own preaching immediately post-conversion — a high-visibility, high-repetition text.
- Resurrection vs. death (Acts 2:23-32; 4:2; 17:31-32; 23:6; 24:15; 26:23). Critical. Direct, repeated collision with Qur’an 4:157; Acts multiplies the number of load-bearing occurrences well beyond Romans, raising cumulative risk of one slipping through without the “real prior death” affirmation.
- Martyrdom / Syahid substitution risk (Acts 7:54-60). High but functionally Critical-adjacent in consequence: a single wrong word choice (syahid) would completely invert Stephen’s death from Christlike forgiveness-under-persecution into an Islamic jihad-paradise-guarantee category. Zero tolerance for the loanword.
- Determinate counsel and foreknowledge / providence-election field (Acts 2:23; 13:48). High. The takdir-substitution risk is not hypothetical — takdir is the first, most natural colloquial Malay word a translator or back-translator might reach for; requires active resistance via the deliberately verbose compound phrase.
- Justification apart from the Law (Acts 13:38-39). Critical. This is the single clearest “apart from law” statement in Acts and must exactly mirror the Romans baseline’s Diperbenarkan/Kebenaran yang diperhitungkan handling; any drift here creates cross-curriculum inconsistency between the Romans and Acts Language Packages for the same learners.
- Signs and wonders / Mukjizat (Acts 2:43; 3:1-10; 5:12-16; 14:3; 19:11-12). High. Mukjizat is the most natural, almost unavoidable Malay word choice, and it is also the exact word carrying the closed Islamic prophetic-authentication category — an unusually high-frequency, high-naturalness collision.
- Circumcision debate framing (Acts 15:1-11). High. Risk is not mistranslation of the word itself (sunat/berkhitan is uncontroversial) but of the narrative framing drifting into implied commentary on a positively-practiced, emotionally significant contemporary Malay-Islamic rite.
- Repentance / Bertobat (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; 26:20). High. Extremely high-frequency term across the whole book; the taubat-collision risk compounds with every occurrence rather than being isolated to one passage.
- Stoning / Merajam (Acts 7:58-60; 14:19). High. Distinct from #4 above (which concerns the witness/testimony category); this risk concerns the method of death being read through a live, contested Malaysian hudud-legal lens rather than as illegitimate mob violence.
- “The Way” / Jalan Tuhan (Acts 9:2; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22). High. Double-edged: can function as either a valuable cultural bridge or a serious misreading (law/ritual-code substitute for relational following), depending entirely on whether the accompanying teaching note is actually delivered — a fragile risk profile.
- Filled with the Holy Spirit / bomoh-trance collision (Acts 2:4; 4:8,31; 13:9). High. Risk of assimilation to kerasukan (spirit-possession trance) phenomenology familiar from Malay folk religious practice; mitigated only by consistently pairing the filling with its Christ-exalting, proclamation-producing fruit.
- Kingdom of God / Kerajaan (Acts 1:3,6; 28:31). Medium, but flagged for elevated attention because the text’s own narrative (the disciples’ 1:6 misreading) dramatizes the exact collision this Language Package is trying to prevent — an unusually self-aware risk case worth using pedagogically rather than merely defending against.
- Christian identity label / Kristian (Acts 11:26; 26:28). Medium. Risk is less about mistranslation than about the term’s real social cost for Malay-background readers given the ethnicity-Islam constitutional fusion; requires pastoral framing alongside translation accuracy.
- Sect/party / Aliran vs. Mazhab (Acts 24:14). Medium. Lower doctrinal stakes than items above, but included because Mazhab is linguistically the more natural, likely first-instinct choice, requiring active vigilance during Phase 2 QA passes.
5. Chapters Confirmed Reviewed With No New Load-Bearing Vocabulary
Per full-book-coverage requirements, the following chapters were reviewed in full and confirmed to introduce no new terms or doctrines beyond those already captured in the Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix (§1) and the core glossary:
| Chapter | Status | Notes |
|---|
| 18 | Reviewed — no new terms | Reuses “the Way” (established ch. 9), the “baptism of John” motif anticipating ch. 19’s fuller treatment, and Kristus; no new risk items. |
| 27 | Reviewed — no new terms | Reuses “angel of the Lord” (established ch. 12) and the providence field (Pemeliharaan Allah, established at 2:23); the storm/shipwreck narrative illustrates but does not introduce new vocabulary. |
All other chapters (1–17, 19–26, 28) contribute at least one load-bearing term captured above.
This analysis extends but does not override translation_memory.json (Romans baseline). All recommended strategies above must be reflected in the Acts-specific additions to translation_memory.json and the forbidden-substitution list of 12_ai_translation_requirements.md before Phase 2 translation of Acts begins.