Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 — Linguistic Gap Analysis: Isaiah — English → Mandarin
Purpose
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Isaiah curriculum. It identifies where Mandarin Chinese lacks natural vocabulary for Isaiah’s theological content (“missing vocabulary”), where Isaiah’s vocabulary lands inside semantic fields already crowded by competing Chinese religious/philosophical traditions (“crowded neighborhoods requiring fencing”), and makes explicit transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions. It closes with a ranked list of this book’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 routing.
This analysis governs, and is consistent with, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json/bible_term_registry.json (language authority) and the Isaiah-specific 08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json already produced. No recommendation below contradicts an established baseline rendering; where Isaiah surfaces a new collision on an existing baseline term (e.g. grace/chesed, calling/election, Messiah/Cyrus), this document supplies the fencing rationale that the glossary entries assume.
Full-book coverage note: gap analysis below is organized by doctrine and semantic field rather than sequential chapter, but draws examples from Isaiah 1–66 in full. Chapters not cited below (e.g. much of the oracle-against-nations material in chs. 13-23 outside Babylon/Leviathan images, and the historical narrative of chs. 36-39 outside Hezekiah’s psalm) are reviewed and contribute no additional load-bearing terms beyond those already catalogued in 08_core_glossary.md; they are noted here as reviewed, no new gap.
Part 1: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the seven curriculum doctrines: available Mandarin terms, their weaknesses/collision risks, and the recommended handling strategy.
1.1 The Holiness and Majesty of God (Isaiah 6)
| Available Mandarin Term | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 圣洁 (shèngjié) — baseline adjective | Risks collapsing into Daoist/Buddhist ritual-purity 清净 if untaught | Reuse baseline exactly; always pair with relational/moral framing, not ritual stillness |
| 圣哉!圣哉!圣哉! (Trisagion, new) | Risks drifting toward 至圣至圣至圣, invoking Confucius’s honorific 至圣 (“Utmost Sage”) | Fence with explicit doxological framing: this is heaven’s worship-cry about God’s nature, not a human honorific title escalated three times |
| 撒拉弗 (Seraphim, transliteration) | No native Mandarin category for a holiness-declaring, self-covering winged being; risk of conflation with dragon (龙) or phoenix (凤凰), both auspicious/imperial | Transliterate; supply a one-line functional gloss (“heavenly beings who cry out God’s holiness and cover themselves before him”) rather than borrowing a mythological creature name |
| 神的荣耀 (glory, baseline 荣耀) | Risk of collapsing into 面子 (social face) or 光宗耀祖 (ancestral honor) | Reuse baseline exactly |
Gap identified: Mandarin has no native lexical item for the reaction to holiness — dread mixed with worship (“Woe is me, I am ruined,” 6:5). 祸哉 (woe) exists as a formulaic prophetic cry (see 5.4 below) but the first-person self-indictment in 6:5 needs paraphrase, not a fixed term: 我有祸了 (“woe is come upon me”) rather than a technical compound.
1.2 The Coming Messiah and Suffering Servant
| Available Mandarin Term | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 基督 (Messiah/Christ, baseline) | CRITICAL Isaiah-specific collision: same Hebrew root (מָשִׁיחַ) is applied to Cyrus, a pagan king (45:1) | Reserve 基督 strictly for the eschatological fulfillment; render Cyrus’s title 受膏者/我所膏的; see Part 3 below for full disambiguation protocol |
| 耶和华的仆人 (Servant of the LORD, new) | Corporate (Israel) vs. individual (Messiah) referent shifts across chs. 41-53 without lexical marking in Hebrew or Mandarin | Flag every occurrence for referent-identification rather than silently resolving; do not create two different Mandarin terms for the two referents, since the OT text itself deliberately blurs them |
| 苗 / 枝子 / 根 (Branch/Root, new) | Multiple underlying Hebrew nouns (tsemach, netzer, shoresh) map to distinct but related Mandarin words; risk of appearing as three unrelated images | Teach as one unified Messianic motif; cross-reference consistently with 大卫的后裔 |
| 奇妙策士 / 全能的神 / 永在的父 / 和平的君 (Isaiah 9:6 throne names, new) | 全能的神 and 永在的父 risk being read as identifying the Messiah with the Father (modalism) rather than affirming shared, eternal divine nature | Theologian-authored clarifying note required at every occurrence distinguishing eternal character ascription from Trinitarian person identity |
| 童女 (almah/virgin, new) | Hebrew semantic range is broader (“young woman”) than the CUV/LXX/Matthew “virgin” reading | Follow established CUV/Matthew interpretive tradition (童女); flag for theologian review so teachers can explain the interpretive move rather than presenting it as an uncontested lexical fact |
1.3 Judgment on Israel’s Idolatry and Injustice
| Available Mandarin Term | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 罪 / 罪孽 / 过犯 (sin/iniquity/transgression) | Three near-synonyms risk collapsing into one generic “sin” in translation, losing Isaiah’s rhetorical stacking (esp. ch. 1, ch. 53) | Render each consistently and distinctly per the established mapping in assets/bible_term_registry.json; teach the three-term stack as intensification, not redundancy |
| 偶像 (idols) | Risk of being weaponized against ancestor-veneration tablets (祖先牌位) and filial ritual, which Isaiah’s polemic does not directly address | Fence explicitly: target is image-worship as a rival to God, not blanket condemnation of honoring the deceased |
| 悖逆 (rebellion) | Could be read as mere political insubordination | Retain covenant-relational sense: rebellion against a personal sovereign to whom Israel owes loyalty, not simply defiance of civil authority |
| 公义 (mishpat + tsedaqah, social justice) | Risk of merging indistinguishably with the forensic Critical term 义 (righteousness) | Teach relationship (公义 is the social outworking of the same righteous character that 义 names forensically), not identity |
1.4 Comfort and Restoration for God’s People
| Available Mandarin Term | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 安慰 (comfort) | Risk of being read as stoic self-consolation (自我安慰) or as a this-worldly wish parallel to 平安’s amulet-sense | Anchor as God’s own relational act of turning toward suffering people (40:1), not a coping technique |
| 慈爱 (chesed) | CRITICAL: risk of collapsing into 慈悲 (Buddhist compassion, esp. Guanyin devotion) | See Part 2.3 below — mandatory fencing, escalate every occurrence |
| 余民 (remnant) | Risk of flattening into 幸存者 (“survivor”), losing covenant-faithfulness sense | Reuse established rendering; teach as a sign of covenant faithfulness, not chance survival |
| 你的丈夫(即造你的主) (Maker-as-husband, 54:5) | Risk of syncretistic “sacred marriage” fertility-cult reading | Frame strictly as covenant-fidelity metaphor |
1.5 The Sovereignty of God over the Nations
| Available Mandarin Term | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 再没有别神 / 我是首先的,我是末后的 (monotheism formulas) | Risk of softening toward folk multi-deity coexistence assumptions (city gods, kitchen god) given 神’s common-noun usage | Retain unqualified exclusivity in every occurrence; no paraphrase softening permitted |
| 利维坦 (Leviathan, transliteration) | Direct semantic inversion risk: rendering as 龙 (dragon) would import an auspicious, imperial connotation, the near-opposite of a judged chaos-monster | Transliterate; never substitute 龙 |
| 耶和华的日子 / 报仇的日子 (Day of the LORD / vengeance) | Risk of being read through Chinese astrological “auspicious day” (黄道吉日) selection culture | Fence as a personal, sovereign, one-time act of judgment/salvation, not a fortuitous calendar date |
| 明星 (Day Star, son of Dawn, 14:12) | Secondary Christian interpretive tradition (Satan’s fall) risks being presented as the primary sense | Flag Satan-fall reading explicitly as a later interpretive extension; primary sense is an anti-Babylon royal taunt |
1.6 Salvation Extended to the Nations
| Available Mandarin Term | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 外邦人 (Gentiles/nations, baseline) | Reuse exactly; NEVER 夷人 | No new gap; reinforce baseline note |
| 万国的光 (Light to the Nations) | Low ambiguity but must be taught together with 外邦人 for doctrinal continuity | No new gap |
| 万民祷告的殿 (House of Prayer for All Nations) | Low ambiguity, direct textual base for the doctrine | No new gap |
| 报好信(与福音对应) (besorah/good tidings) | Risk of diverging from baseline 福音 when Romans 10:15 is taught alongside Isaiah 52:7 | Must render so as to visibly correspond to 福音, not read as an unrelated generic “news” term |
| 救赎主 (Redeemer/go’el) | CRITICAL: risk of collapsing into bodhisattva-savior figures (Guanyin 观音, Amitabha 阿弥陀佛) | See Part 2.4 below |
1.7 The New Heavens and New Earth
| Available Mandarin Term | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| 新天新地 (new heavens and new earth) | Risk of being read through a cyclical cosmic-age lens (新一劫, a new kalpa) native to Buddhist/Daoist cosmology | Fence explicitly as a single, final, non-repeating renewal |
| 永不熄灭的火 (unquenchable fire) | Risk of being read through Buddhist temporary hell-realms (地狱), from which rebirth is possible | Fence as eternal, non-cyclical judgment |
| 吞灭死亡 (swallow up death, 25:8) | Risk of collapsing into 涅槃 (nirvana/cessation of suffering) — wrong category entirely | Retain the concrete “swallowing/abolishing” victory image tied to bodily resurrection |
| 凡有血气的都来敬拜 (all flesh shall worship) | Low ambiguity | Retain unqualified universality as the book’s closing note |
Part 2: Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
Unlike Romans, which operates largely in NT Greek theological vocabulary already stabilized by the CUV tradition, Isaiah’s Hebrew poetic and prophetic register repeatedly lands inside semantic fields that Chinese religious traditions have heavily populated. The following fields require deliberate fencing — not new terms, but explicit boundary-drawing notes attached to existing baseline or new-term renderings.
2.1 The 命 (mìng) field — calling, election, providence, fate
Chinese has a dense, culturally load-bearing vocabulary cluster around impersonal cosmic destiny: 天命 (Mandate of Heaven), 命运 (fate), 缘分 (predestined fortuitous connection), 天意 (Heaven’s intention). Isaiah repeatedly uses personal, relational vocabulary — God’s naming/calling of Isaiah (6:8), the Servant (41:9; 49:1), Cyrus (45:3-4), and Israel (43:1) — that sits directly adjacent to this field. Fence: every occurrence of 蒙召的/呼召/拣选/神的护理 must retain a personal-agent, relational-summons sense; the baseline’s forbidden-substitution list (天命, 命运, 缘分, 天意 alone) applies without exception across Isaiah, and Isaiah’s density of calling/election language (chs. 41-49 especially) makes this field higher-traffic than in Romans, raising the review burden accordingly.
2.2 The 义/圣 (yì/shèng) field — righteousness, holiness, sagehood
Already Critical in the baseline for Romans; Isaiah intensifies the collision because 义 recurs at extremely high density (over 50 occurrences) and because ch. 6’s Trisagion introduces a second layer (圣) not present in Romans. Fence: (a) every justification-context 义 occurrence, especially 53:11’s “my righteous servant,” requires the baseline’s Confucian-virtue-distinguishing note; (b) 圣洁/圣徒 must never be allowed to drift toward 圣人/至圣 register, especially given ch. 6’s exalted throne-room setting, which could tempt a “sage apotheosis” reading absent explicit fencing.
2.3 The 慈 (cí) field — chesed vs. Buddhist compassion
This is Isaiah’s single highest-density new collision risk not present in Romans at all. Chesed (God’s covenant-loyal, steadfast love) recurs as a major theme of chs. 40-66. Mandarin’s most natural-sounding rendering, 慈悲, is the defining devotional term of Chinese Buddhist compassion, inseparably associated with Guanyin (观音), the “Bodhisattva of Compassion” — arguably the single most popular devotional figure in Chinese folk religion. Using 慈悲 for chesed would not merely blur a nuance; it would functionally graft an Isaiah passage onto Guanyin devotion in a reader’s mind. Fence: mandatory use of 慈爱 (never 慈悲) for chesed in every occurrence (54:8,10; 55:3; 63:7), escalated to human theologian review every time, per the escalation note in 08_core_glossary.md. Teachers must explicitly name and reject the 慈悲 association rather than assuming readers will not make the connection — the connection is likely, not remote.
2.4 The 救 (jiù) field — salvation, redeemer, savior-figures
Chinese religious vocabulary offers several culturally powerful “savior” figures: 救世主 (a generic “world-savior,” used loosely of any messianic figure including secular ones), 观音 (compassionate rescuer through ritual invocation), and 弥勒 (future Buddha-savior, already fenced in the baseline for Messiah). Isaiah’s go’el (kinsman-redeemer, 41:14; 43:1,14) is a specific relational-legal concept — a covenant-kin who pays a price to buy back what is lost — categorically different from a compassionate bystander-deity who intervenes on behalf of any petitioner regardless of relationship. Fence: 救赎主 is retained (not 救世主 alone, which is too generic, and never a Guanyin-echoing periphrasis); every occurrence should be taught with the kinsman-redeemer legal background (cf. Ruth, Leviticus 25) so the covenant-kinship logic — not generalized compassion — grounds the term.
2.5 The 道 (dào) field — Word, Way, incarnation
Carried over from the baseline (道成肉身), but Isaiah adds pressure through its own “way” vocabulary — the Highway of Holiness (35:8, 圣洁之路), “prepare the way” (40:3), and 神的话 (“the word of our God,” 40:8). None of these individually risk the Daoist collision as acutely as 道成肉身 does, but taken together they form a dense cluster of “way/word” language that could, without care, be harmonized by a reader into a single impersonal cosmic-Way concept spanning both Testaments. Fence: keep 道 (in 道成肉身) doctrinally distinct from 路/道路 (way, a path one walks) and 话 (word, a spoken message) — these are ordinary Mandarin words without the metaphysical loading, and should not be taught as variant forms of the same “Dao” concept.
2.6 The 福 (fú) field — grace, gospel, blessing, fortune
Carried over from the baseline (福音’s 福-root collision with fortune-seeking culture), Isaiah’s chesed-adjacent grace vocabulary (30:18’s 施恩, ch. 55’s free invitation, 61:2’s 恩年) intensifies this collision because Isaiah explicitly contrasts God’s free gift against payment/earning in commercial metaphor (55:1, “buy wine and milk without money”). Fence: this is actually a teaching opportunity rather than a pure risk — Isaiah 55:1’s monetary contrast can be used to sharpen, not blur, the grace-vs-merit distinction already Critical in the baseline, provided 施恩/恩典/恩年 are never glossed with 造化 (fortune/luck) or treated as compatible with a 功德 ledger.
2.7 The 灭/罚 (miè/fá) field — judgment, retribution, karma
Isaiah’s judgment vocabulary (musar/刑罚, mishpat/审判, “day of vengeance”/报仇的日子) sits adjacent to 报应 (karmic retribution), already fenced in the baseline for 罪. Isaiah 53:4’s “stricken, smitten by God” (被神击打) is the single sharpest instance: the onlookers’ mistaken assumption that the Servant’s suffering proves personal guilt is a direct dramatization of the retribution-worldview error the whole book (and gospel) must correct. Fence: 53:4 must be taught with explicit narrative-voice marking — this is the crowd’s wrong inference, corrected in 53:5 — or a Mandarin reader steeped in 报应 assumptions will read the verse as confirming rather than refuting a karma-based view of suffering.
Part 3: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Seraphim (שְׂרָפִים) | Transliterate (撒拉弗) + functional gloss | No native category exists; borrowing an existing mythological creature name (龙/凤凰) would import unwanted auspicious/imperial connotations worse than an unfamiliar transliteration |
| Leviathan (לִוְיָתָן) | Transliterate (利维坦), mandatory | The one natural Mandarin equivalent (龙) carries the exact opposite connotation (auspicious vs. judged chaos-monster); transliteration is safer than any paraphrase |
| Immanuel (עִמָּנוּ אֵל) | Transliterate (以马内利) + gloss “God with us” | Established CUV form; paraphrasing as “有神与我们同在” loses the proper-noun weight the NT (Matt 1:23) depends on when quoting it as a name |
| Almah (עַלְמָה) | Paraphrase via established interpretive tradition (童女, “virgin”), not literal transliteration | Hebrew has no transliteration tradition in Mandarin Bible usage for common nouns; the LXX/Matthew/CUV interpretive rendering must be followed, with the semantic-range caveat flagged for theologians |
| Meshiach — eschatological sense | Paraphrase via established loanword (基督, itself originally a Greek transliteration path) | Reuse baseline exactly; do not introduce a separate Hebrew-based transliteration (מָשִׁיחַ → 弥赛亚) as a competing form, to avoid fracturing cross-testament consistency |
| Meshiach — Cyrus’s generic “anointed” (45:1) | Paraphrase, deliberately NOT the loanword (受膏者 / 我所膏的) | The single most important Isaiah-specific disambiguation: reusing 基督 here would falsely brand a pagan king as the eschatological Messiah; must render generically |
| Asham (אָשָׁם, guilt offering) | Paraphrase (赎罪祭), not transliteration | Levitical cultic system has no transliteration tradition in Chinese Bible usage; must use the established sacrificial-system compound, explicitly distinguished from the drifted secular idiom 替罪羊 |
| Chesed (חֶסֶד) | Paraphrase (慈爱), never transliteration and never 慈悲 | A transliterated Hebrew loanword would be meaningless to Mandarin readers with no Hebrew literacy; the semantic paraphrase must be chosen specifically to avoid the Buddhist-compassion collision |
| Go’el (גֹּאֵל, Redeemer) | Paraphrase (救赎主), not transliteration | Legal-relational concept requiring semantic content, not a borrowed sound; transliteration would convey nothing without the kinsman-redeemer background |
| Trisagion exclamation (קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ) | Paraphrase using existing adjective, tripled (圣哉!圣哉!圣哉!) | Not a proper noun; the CUV doxological convention of tripling 圣哉 is already established liturgical Mandarin usage (cf. Rev 4:8 quotations) and should be reused, not re-coined |
| Cyrus (כֹּרֶשׁ) | Transliterate (居鲁士), standard CUV form | Ordinary proper-name handling; no doctrinal risk beyond the “anointed” title disambiguation already covered above |
| Throne names (Isaiah 9:6) | Paraphrase, compound descriptive titles | These are meaningful epithets (Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, etc.), not proper nouns or sounds; each requires a semantically faithful Mandarin compound, as already selected in 08_core_glossary.md |
General principle applied: transliterate proper nouns and unique named entities lacking any native category (Seraphim, Leviathan, Immanuel, Cyrus); paraphrase common nouns, titles, and theological-technical terms using semantically chosen Mandarin vocabulary that actively avoids the nearest false-friend in Chinese religious tradition, even when a closer-sounding or more “natural” alternative exists (chesed/慈悲 being the paradigm case).
Part 4: Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of reader misreading given Chinese religious-cultural priors).
| Rank | Ambiguity | Doctrine | Risk Tier | Rationale | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Meshiach applied to Cyrus (45:1) vs. eschatological Christ | Messianic Promise / Sovereignty of God | Critical | Same root as 基督; false identification would brand a pagan king as the Messiah, undermining the doctrine’s exclusivity | Strict 受膏者/基督 disambiguation protocol (Part 3); context-check every meshiach-family occurrence before term selection |
| 2 | Chesed (慈爱) vs. Buddhist 慈悲/Guanyin devotion | Comfort and Restoration / Grace | Critical | Isaiah’s highest-frequency new collision; near-certain reader association given 观音’s cultural ubiquity | Never render 慈悲; mandatory theologian review every occurrence |
| 3 | Asham/guilt offering (赎罪祭) vs. secularized 替罪羊 idiom | Suffering Servant / Atonement | Critical | The idiom’s drift toward “unfairly blamed scapegoat” strips the cultic, atoning sense central to Isaiah 53:10 | Explicit restoration of technical, sacrificial meaning in every teaching context; theologian review every occurrence |
| 4 | Nasa/sabal bearing verbs (担当/背负) vs. Buddhist merit-transfer (回向) | Suffering Servant / Substitutionary Atonement | Critical | Substitution could be misread as a transferable merit-ledger operation rather than a unique, personal, judicial exchange | Consistent rendering, mandatory theologian review at every occurrence per escalation note |
| 5 | ”Stricken, smitten by God” (被神击打, 53:4) vs. karmic-retribution (报应) worldview | Suffering Servant / Universal Human Accountability | Critical | Without explicit narrative-voice marking, readers may read this as confirming the Servant deserved his suffering — the opposite of the passage’s point | Explicit note: this is the crowd’s mistaken inference, corrected in v.5 |
| 6 | Go’el/Redeemer (救赎主) vs. bodhisattva-savior figures (Guanyin, Amitabha) | Comfort and Restoration / Salvation | Critical | Popular devotional familiarity with compassionate rescuer-deities could reframe covenant-kin redemption as generalized compassionate intervention | Teach with kinsman-redeemer legal background; never use 救世主 alone or Guanyin-echoing periphrasis |
| 7 | Almah/virgin (童女) semantic range vs. Hebrew lexical breadth | Incarnation / Messianic Promise | Critical | Hebrew almah does not lexically guarantee virginity; presenting the CUV rendering as an uncontested lexical fact rather than an inherited interpretive tradition risks credibility gaps with informed readers | Theologian review; explain the LXX/Matthew interpretive move explicitly rather than asserting it silently |
| 8 | Leviathan (利维坦) vs. 龙 (dragon) | Sovereignty of God over the Nations | High | 龙 carries an auspicious, imperial connotation that is the near-exact inverse of a judged chaos-monster; a translation error here would invert the passage’s meaning | Mandatory transliteration; never substitute 龙 under any circumstance |
| 9 | Day Star, son of Dawn (明星, 14:12) — primary Babylon-taunt vs. secondary Satan-fall reading | Sovereignty of God over the Nations | Medium-High | Presenting the Satan-fall reading as the primary sense collapses a historically-contested interpretive layer into the base text | Flag Satan-fall reading explicitly as a later Christian interpretive extension |
| 10 | New heavens and new earth (新天新地) vs. cyclical kalpa (新一劫) | New Heavens and New Earth | High | Chinese cosmological intuition defaults to cyclical renewal (Buddhist kalpas, Daoist cosmic ages); the biblical hope is singular and final | Explicit “once, final, non-repeating” framing in every teaching use |
| 11 | Fear of the LORD (敬畏耶和华) vs. superstitious ghost-fear (怕鬼) | Coming Messiah / Sanctification | Medium-High | Folk-religious fear of spirits is a live cultural referent that could contaminate the reverent-awe sense | Distinguish reverent covenant awe from superstitious dread explicitly |
| 12 | Election/calling vocabulary (拣选/蒙召的/呼召) vs. 天命/命运/缘分 | Divine Calling / Effectual Calling / Providence | High | Isaiah’s density of calling language (chs. 41-49) raises cumulative exposure to the impersonal-fate misreading beyond Romans’ baseline levels | Reinforce personal-agent, relational-summons framing at each cluster of occurrences, not just isolated verses |
| 13 | Fasting/Sabbath (禁食/安息日) vs. merit-earning ritual observance (斋戒) | Judgment on Injustice / Grace | Medium | Folk Buddhist/Daoist fasting practice is merit-accumulating; Isaiah 58’s true fasting is relationally, not ritually, defined | Teach Isaiah 58 explicitly as a critique of merit-flavored religious performance |
| 14 | Precious cornerstone (房角石) vs. fengshui foundation-laying ritual (风水) | Coming Messiah | Medium | Construction-ritual associations for “cornerstone” language could reframe salvation security as geomantic luck | Frame explicitly as salvation-security, not construction-luck |
| 15 | Besorah/good tidings (报好信) vs. baseline 福音’s fortune-culture root (福) | Salvation Extended to the Nations / Gospel | Medium | Cross-testament consistency risk: if Isaiah 52:7 is rendered inconsistently with Romans 10:15’s 福音, the citation’s force is lost, compounding the pre-existing 福-root fortune-culture risk | Render to visibly correspond to 福音; flag for native speaker review whenever taught alongside Romans 10:15 |
Summary of Recommendations for Phase 2 Handoff
- Adopt all Part 1 doctrine-matrix strategies as binding term selections; they are consistent with and extend
08_core_glossary.mdandassets/bible_term_registry.json. - Add the five crowded-neighborhood fields of Part 2 (命, 义/圣, 慈, 救, 灭/罚) as standing review triggers in addition to the individual Critical/High terms already flagged — a segment may contain no single flagged term yet still sit inside a crowded field requiring native-speaker sensitivity (e.g., cumulative calling/election density in chs. 41-49).
- Apply the transliteration/paraphrase decisions of Part 3 uniformly; do not permit ad hoc transliteration of common nouns (chesed, go’el, asham) or ad hoc paraphrase of proper nouns (Seraphim, Leviathan, Immanuel).
- Route the fifteen ranked ambiguities of Part 4 to mandatory human theologian review regardless of the individual term’s baseline risk tier, since ambiguity risk here is compounded by cultural-collision likelihood, not merely doctrinal centrality alone.
This document feeds directly into doctrine_risk_registry.json (Isaiah extension) and the Isaiah-specific additions to 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.