01 Executive Summary — Ruth (English → Mandarin)

Why it matters: Ruth 1:16-17 is the theological anchor of this curriculum, but the translation risk runs across all four chapters. Ruth is the Bible’s clearest sustained narrative of God’s providence in ordinary life, and its climax — a Moabite Gentile woman becoming David’s great-grandmother — is the OT seedbed for the Davidic-Messianic line Romans 1:3 and Matthew 1:5 cite as fulfilled in Christ. Mandarin’s biggest exposure here isn’t mistranslation; it’s silent doctrinal loss through omitted teaching bridges on terms that are lexically “correct” but theologically inert on their own.

Key findings:

• Ruth introduces one genuinely new Critical-tier term absent from the Romans baseline: 耶和华 (Yēhéhuá, YHWH), which must never collapse into 神 (generic God) or 主 (reserved for NT Christ’s-Lordship confession).
• The kinsman-redeemer (至近的亲属/赎) is the single highest silent-failure risk in the curriculum: the Mandarin phrase reads as bare legal kinship, with zero built-in redemptive theology, unless every occurrence is explicitly bridged to 救赎 and to Christ.
• Hesed (恩待/慈爱) has no single native Mandarin equivalent and is squeezed between two false friends — 恩典 (baseline soteriological grace) and 义气 (insider honor-code loyalty) — requiring a recurring taught-concept gloss, not just a glossary entry.
• The core passage’s two vow-clauses (你的国就是我的国 / 你的神就是我的神, Ruth 1:16) must be taught as one indivisible covenantal declaration; 国 (“nation”) risks a modern political-naturalization misreading if separated from the God-clause.
• 15 baseline Romans terms are inherited exactly (神, 主, 恩典, 约, 外邦人, 大卫, 大卫的后裔, 神的大能, 儿子的名分, 义, 以色列, 救恩, 基督, 神的护理, 团契); 40 new terms are introduced, for 55 total enforced terms.

Risks:

• 9 of 9 Ruth-specific doctrines are Critical or High risk (2 Critical, 6 High, 1 Medium, 0 Low) — every doctrine except levirate-adjacent kinship preservation requires human theologian review before Phase 2 translation proceeds.
• Combined with the 15 inherited Critical/High baseline terms actively in scope for Ruth (神, 主, 恩典, 约, 外邦人, 大卫的后裔, 神的大能, 儿子的名分, 义, 救恩, 基督, 神的护理 = 12 of the 15 inherited terms are Critical or High), the curriculum carries 8 doctrines + 12 inherited terms + roughly 20 new Critical/High Ruth terms requiring theologian-level oversight — the highest reviewer-load density of any doctrine identified across the Romans-plus-Ruth package to date.
• The single greatest exposure: Chinese folk religion’s additive, multi-deity devotional default (city god, kitchen god, ancestral spirits) directly threatens the exclusivity force of Ruth’s core-passage confession — the book’s central conversion moment can be silently misread as syncretistic addition rather than exclusive renunciation of Chemosh.
• Genealogy (后代, 4:18-22) and the kanaph wings/garment-corner image (2:12/3:9) both suffer irreparable lexical loss at the translation level; both failure modes are invisible unless a mandatory footnote is present.

Opportunities:

• Ruth’s narrative form is unusually well-suited to Mandarin readers: 族谱 (family genealogy) and 宗族 (ancestral clan) consciousness make the closing genealogy immediately intelligible, and 香火/传宗接代 (family-line continuation) concerns make Boaz’s redemption motive resonate strongly — provided teaching material redirects this resonance toward redemptive-historical purpose rather than ancestor-rite continuation.
• Ruth 1:6’s “God visited his people” (眷顾) is arguably the single strongest available narrative illustration for teaching the baseline’s own providence doctrine (already flagged as High risk in Romans 8:28) — this curriculum can supply the concrete case study the Romans package lacks.
• Hesed as a “taught concept, not a translated word” gives curriculum designers a natural, recurring teaching moment (1:8; 2:20; 3:10) to reinforce the grace-versus-merit distinction the baseline already establishes for Romans 4 and 11:5-6, deepening cross-curriculum doctrinal consistency.

Recommended actions:

1. Adopt assets/translation_memory.json (55 terms: 15 inherited + 40 new) and assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json (9 doctrines) as-is for Phase 2 enforcement; no outstanding term decisions remain open.
2. Require mandatory standing footnote slots (not optional inline notes) in every Phase 2 lesson template for: kinsman-redeemer (至近的亲属), hesed (恩待/慈爱), the YHWH/神/主 boundary, the kanaph wings/garment-corner link (2:12/3:9), and the genealogy bridge (4:18-22 → 大卫的后裔 → Matthew 1:5).
3. Route all 2 Critical and 6 High doctrines, plus every segment touching an inherited Critical/High baseline term, to human theologian review per analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md’s escalation rules before any Ruth content is marked approved.
4. Brief theologian reviewers specifically on the Chinese folk-religion additive-devotion default and the Hua-Yi (华夷) insider/outsider collision — the two collision risks most likely to produce a “correctly translated, wrongly understood” outcome in this book.