01 Executive Summary — Acts | English → Malayalam

Why it matters: Acts is the narrative hinge between the Gospels and Romans — it enacts the doctrines (Gentile inclusion, justification apart from the law, grace over merit) that Romans argues. Malayalam remains the best-positioned language in this entire pipeline: nearly two millennia of continuous, settled Christian vocabulary (Saint Thomas Christian tradition, traditionally dated to 52 AD) means most of Acts’ theological terms already have safe, established renderings. But Acts introduces terms and narrative episodes the Romans package never had to cover — Pentecost, apostolic miracles vs. sorcery, and Paul’s conversion — several of which collide with living Kerala folk-religious practice and social history in ways Romans’ more abstract argumentation did not surface.

Key findings:

• 91 tracked terms total (40 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline + 51 new to Acts), of which 39 are Critical or High risk (10 Critical, 29 High) and require mandatory human theologian review before Phase 2 sign-off.
• 36 doctrines tracked in the full registry (27 requiring theologian review: 10 Critical + 17 High; 6 Medium requiring native-speaker review; 3 Low requiring automated review only).
• The single highest-probability AI-hallucination risk in this book is “filled with the Holy Spirit” drifting to ആവേശം (ecstatic ritual possession, the vocabulary of Kerala’s living theyyam/mudiyettu folk-performance traditions) — a fluent-sounding, statistically common Malayalam word that would recast Pentecost as folk possession rather than the Spirit’s personal indwelling.
• A close second is the phonetic collision between the required term പാപമോചനം (forgiveness of sin) and the forbidden term മോക്ഷം (moksha, reincarnation-escape) — unique to Acts among this pipeline’s books, since Romans never needed a standalone “forgiveness” compound at this frequency.
• Kerala’s own internal caste history (not interfaith syncretism) is the dominant recurring risk class across four separate doctrines: Gentile inclusion (ജനതകള്‍ vs. forbidden ജാതികള്‍), clean/unclean categories (Peter’s vision, echoing the 1924-25 Vaikom Satyagraha), the Servant title (ദാസൻ’s caste-linked name-suffix history), and universal human accountability.
• Two genuinely new Critical-tier Christological items enter the glossary that did not exist in the Romans baseline: “Son of Man” (Stephen’s vision, 7:56) and the Ascension as its own tracked doctrine.

Risks:

• Critical-tier risk concentrates in Christology and salvation exclusivity carried forward from Romans (Lord, Son of God, Messiah, Resurrection, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Father, Righteousness, Justification) plus two Acts-specific additions (Son of Man; the combined Conversion-of-Paul/Jerusalem-Council/Ascension doctrines).
• High-tier risk is dominated by terms sitting in “crowded semantic neighborhoods” — Malayalam words shared with, or historically claimed by, Kerala’s Hindu, folk-religious, or political vocabulary (ദർശനം/temple darshan, മാർഗ്ഗം/Hindu marga-pluralism, മന്ത്രവാദം/living sorcery practice, സകലവും പൊതുവായി വച്ചു/Kerala communist political history, വിഗ്രഹം/Hindu temple worship, അശുദ്ധം-ശുദ്ധം/caste-purity history).
• Denominational-neutrality risk (Medium tier, native-speaker review) affects “breaking of bread” (Qurbana vs. Lord’s Table vocabulary) and “overseer” (episcopal vs. elder-led polity) — not doctrinal errors, but risks of implicitly privileging one Malayalam Christian tradition over others in cross-denominational study material.

Opportunities:

• Malayalam’s മാർഗ്ഗം (“the Way”) carries a uniquely positive asset unavailable in most other languages in this pipeline: it is the historic Saint Thomas Christian community’s own ancient self-designation, giving Acts’ central self-identity term deep, authentic Kerala-Christian rootedness that only needs an exclusivity fence, not a substitute term.
• Kerala’s centuries-long, socially accepted mission-sending tradition means “mission” and “Great Commission” language carries positive institutional weight rather than colonial-era baggage, unlike in several other language contexts in this pipeline.
• The discipline required is overwhelmingly enforcement, not invention: 40 of 91 terms need zero new translation work, only exact reuse; even most of the 51 new terms map onto already-settled Malayalam Bible vocabulary requiring fencing notes rather than new coinage.

Recommended actions:

1. Lock the Acts 13:38-39 / Acts 15 justification-and-grace cluster to verbatim consistency with the Romans baseline rendering before any other Phase 2 work begins — this is the curriculum’s explicit cross-book doctrinal bridge.
2. Add ആവേശം and ബിഷപ്പ് (as a base rendering for overseer) to the forbidden-substitution validation list immediately, alongside the inherited Romans forbidden list.
3. Instrument automated consistency-review flags on every occurrence of പാപമോചനം to catch reincarnation-adjacent phrasing drift before human review, given its unique phonetic proximity to മോക്ഷം.
4. Require the Kerala caste-history teaching note (clean/unclean, ജനതകള്‍, ദാസൻ, universal accountability) to be surfaced explicitly and positively in every Phase 2 output touching Acts 10-15, per the doctrine analysis’s finding that this is a live internal-church matter, not merely historical background.
5. Route all Spirit-filling, Son of Man, Paul’s conversion, Jerusalem Council, and Ascension segments to mandatory human theologian review per the escalation rules in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md, with no automated-only fallback permitted for these five clusters.