Executive Summary: Acts 1–28 Translation Requirements (Malay)

Why it matters

Acts extends the Romans Language Package into narrative, historical, and cross-cultural terrain that intensifies — rather than introduces — Malay-specific translation risk. Acts repeats the Romans baseline’s highest-stakes collisions (deity of Christ, resurrection, sonship, salvation-exclusivity) at far greater density across 28 chapters, while adding a wholly new category of risk unmatched in Romans: direct textual proximity to live, currently-operating Malaysian legal-administrative systems — the JAKIM halal certification regime (Acts 10’s “unclean” vision), the hudud sentencing debate (Acts 7/14’s stonings), and the Sunni jurisprudential mazhab system (Acts 24’s “sect”). Getting Acts wrong risks not only doctrinal confusion but real-world legal and cultural offense in a way Romans, as a doctrinal letter, did not.

Key findings

• Full-book coverage complete. All 28 chapters analyzed; two chapters (18, 27) confirmed to introduce no new load-bearing vocabulary and are explicitly marked reviewed, not silently omitted.
• 99 total glossary terms now govern Phase 2 translation of Acts: 43 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 56 newly introduced by Acts.
• 14 Critical-risk and 39 High-risk terms (53 total) require human theologian review at the term level — over half of the entire glossary.
• 34 total doctrines identified across the book; 9 Critical + 15 High = 24 doctrines require human theologian review; 7 require native speaker review; 3 are automated-review-only.
• The single highest-severity new risk this book introduces is Acts 10’s “unclean/common” vision, which must never be rendered with haram/halal — this is the only term in either the Romans or Acts packages that risks importing an actively enforced, state-administered legal system directly into Scripture.
• Acts 2 (Pentecost, the core passage), Acts 10 (Cornelius), and Acts 15 (Jerusalem Council) form the book’s three highest doctrinal-density chapters and should be routed to a single continuous reviewer team rather than split across parallel Phase 2 workers.

Risks

• Critical: Haram/halal substitution for Acts 10:14,28 (“unclean/common”) — would import Malaysia’s live JAKIM certification regime into Peter’s vision.
• Critical: Syahid substitution for Stephen’s death (Acts 7) — would recategorize Christlike forgiveness-under-persecution as Islamic jihad-martyrdom guaranteeing paradise.
• Critical: Softening Acts 2:36 (“God has made him both Lord and Christ”) or Acts 9:20 (“He is the Son of God”) — the book’s two highest-visibility deity-of-Christ flashpoints, compounding the Romans baseline’s existing Anak Allah sensitivity.
• Critical: Diluting Acts 4:12’s or 15:11’s unqualified exclusivity/equality language under pastoral-sensitivity pressure.
• High: Mukjizat used for apostolic miracles without accompanying teaching distinguishing apostolic authentication from the closed Islamic nabi/rasul prophetic-authentication category.
• High: Merajam (stoning, chs.7,14) or the Acts 15 circumcision debate read as commentary on contemporary Malaysian hudud debates or the positively-practiced Islamic khitan rite, rather than as bounded historical narrative.
• High: Bertobat (repentance) drifting toward the effort-inclusive Islamic taubat doctrine if the object of turning (faith in Yesus Kristus) is not explicitly named at each occurrence.
• Medium: Kristian identity-label carrying real, under-addressed social cost for Malay-background readers given Malaysia’s constitutional fusion of ethnicity and Islam.

Opportunities

• Acts’ own narrative repeatedly dramatizes the exact collision risks this Language Package flags — the disciples’ political misreading of “kingdom” (1:6), the Areopagus “unknown god” bridge (17:23), and Paul’s refusal of worship at Lystra (14:15) can all be used pedagogically as built-in teaching illustrations rather than only defended against.
• Baptism (baptisan) and adoption-language carry genuine cultural advantages already noted in the Romans baseline; Acts’ repeated baptism narratives (2:38; 8:36-38; 16:31-33; 19:1-5) offer strong opportunity to reinforce grace-not-merit teaching using a term with no Islamic-vocabulary collision.
• The gender-inclusive, status-inclusive prophesying of Acts 2:17-18 (“sons and daughters… menservants and maidservants”) is a distinctive, positive point of theological contrast with the closed, exclusively-male Islamic prophetic office — a constructive rather than merely defensive teaching opportunity.

Recommended actions

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json (Acts extension) alongside the Romans-baseline file for every Phase 2 session; never treat the two as interchangeable or the Acts file as replacing the Romans file.
2. Route all Acts 2, 10, and 15 segments to human theologian review as a matched set, given their combined Critical-doctrine density (Holy Spirit/Pentecost, Gentile inclusion/clean-unclean, justification/circumcision).
3. Enforce the Acts-specific forbidden-substitution list (haram/halal, syahid, Mazhab) with the same zero-tolerance validation gate already applied to the Romans baseline’s Isa/Al-Masih/Syariah/takdir list.
4. Ensure every occurrence of mukjizat, bertobat, merajam, and Jalan Tuhan/Jalan itu is paired with its required accompanying teaching note per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md (Acts extension) before a segment is marked approved.
5. Confirm the final Alkitab-consistent transliteration for “Athens” (Athens vs. Atena) against current print Alkitab before Phase 2 translation of Acts 17 begins, per the open item flagged in the requirements document.

---

This summary synthesizes analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, analysis/08_core_glossary.md, analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, and assets/translation_memory.json for the Acts curriculum. See those documents for full supporting detail.