06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — James — English → Manipuri

Purpose and Scope

This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the James curriculum. It builds directly on the term inventory already fixed in 08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json, and it must not contradict any rendering already recorded there or in the baseline Romans Language Package (translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, doctrine_risk_registry.json). Where this analysis identifies a gap, it proposes a strategy consistent with those established conventions; it does not re-open decisions already finalized in the baseline (e.g. তেংবাং মপু for God, থাজবা for faith, অচুম্বা ওইহনবা for justification).

James presents a distinct linguistic-gap profile from Romans: rather than introducing many wholly new theological categories, James mostly re-deploys baseline terms (থাজবা, থবক-adjacent থবক, অচুম্বা ওইহনবা, চাউবা, তেংবাং মপুগী থৌরাং) into new argumentative contexts, several of which are more exegetically and lexically fraught than their Romans occurrences. James also introduces a cluster of genuinely new terms (তongue, wisdom-from-above, anointing with oil, the Lord’s coming) that sit directly inside crowded semantic neighborhoods shared with Manipur’s two live religious traditions.

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Part 1: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the nine curriculum doctrines: available Manipuri terms, their weaknesses, and the recommended strategy.

1. Faith and Works (James 2:14-26 — core passage)

Available Manipuri terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
থাজবা (faith) [REUSED]	None inherent to the word itself; risk is contextual — a “faith” that is bare intellectual assent (2:14, 2:19) must still be called থাজবা even while James argues it is inadequate. Manipuri has no separate lexeme distinguishing “notional assent” from “living trust.”	Use থাজবা uniformly; carry the distinction (dead/living faith) through the adjoining vitality metaphor (সিবা/জীবন) rather than through a second faith-word. Translator notes required at 2:14, 2:17, 2:20, 2:26.
থবক (works/deeds) [NEW, Critical]	Immediately adjacent to Manipuri Vaishnavism’s সেবা — devotional service that is widely taught (in bhakti catechesis accessible to Meitei Hindu readers) to build standing/merit with Krishna. থবক is a religiously neutral, everyday word for “work/task,” which is exactly its strength but also its exposure: a reader could import a সেবা-shaped merit theology onto it without any lexical signal warning them not to.	Retain থবক (no merit-coded alternative exists that is not worse). MANDATORY teaching layer, not lexical layer: every occurrence in 2:14-26 must carry catechetical framing that থবক is evidence/fruit of থাজবা, never its price — explicitly naming and setting aside the সেবা comparison at least once per chapter-length teaching unit.
অচুম্বা ওইহনবা (justified) [REUSED, Critical]	This is the single largest cross-book harmonization risk in the entire James curriculum: the identical Manipuri phrase carries the initial forensic sense in Romans 3-4 and the demonstrative/vindicating sense in James 2. A reader moving between the two curricula could conclude James contradicts Romans, or could resolve the (apparent) tension by quietly adopting a works-based justification reading of Romans.	Reuse the exact baseline phrase (no alternative rendering permitted — see registry mandate) but require a HARMONIZATION NOTE at every occurrence in James 2:21-25, explicitly walking through the Abraham timeline (Genesis 15:6 credited-by-faith, c. 2:23 / Genesis 22 demonstrated-by-works, ~20 years later). This is a teaching-layer fix, not a lexical one — no new term should be coined for James’s sense, since doing so would sever the deliberate verbal echo Romans 4:3/James 2:23 depend on.
পীথোকপা অচুম্বা চৎনবিরাক (credited/imputed righteousness) [REUSED, Critical]	None new; this is the strongest available doctrinal anchor point in the whole book because it reuses the baseline term verbatim and the source text itself quotes the same Genesis 15:6 verse Romans 4:3 quotes.	Reuse exactly; treat as the primary proof-text bridge between the Faith-and-Works doctrine and Romans’ justification-by-faith-alone doctrine, resolving the surface tension with দিকাইওō’s two senses (see above).
তেংবাং মপুগী মরুপ (friend of God) [NEW, Critical]	Sits inside Manipuri Vaishnavism’s live sakhya bhāva devotional category (friendship-mode bhakti toward Krishna), one of five classical relational modes actively taught in Manipur’s Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition connected to Ras Lila devotion. A reader could hear Abraham’s designation as placing him inside this existing devotee-friendship framework rather than describing a unique, God-initiated covenant intimacy.	No better lexical alternative exists (a paraphrase avoiding মরুপ entirely would lose the KJV/ESV-tradition’s recognizable “friend of God” wording that anchors this text across the whole Bible-translation tradition). Retain তেংবাং মপুগী মরুপ but require a mandatory contrastive teaching note at every occurrence distinguishing God-initiated covenant intimacy from devotee-initiated sakhya bhāva. Theologian review required at every occurrence (already flagged in glossary).
তেংবাং মপু (one God) [REUSED, Critical]	None new; James 2:19 uses this bare-monotheism confession specifically to show its insufficiency alone.	Reuse exactly; teaching layer must stress that this same confession, unaccompanied by works, is what demons themselves hold (2:19b) — the term is doctrinally sound, but the argument’s rhetorical force needs explicit framing so readers do not hear James as merely repeating an orthodox creed-affirmation.

Summary: Faith and Works has almost no missing-vocabulary gap — every key term is either an exact baseline reuse or already coined in the James glossary. Its risk is concentrated entirely in harmonization and teaching-layer framing, not in lexical availability.

2. Trials and the Testing of Faith (James 1:2-4, 1:12-15)

Available Manipuri terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
চাংলবা (peirasmos/peirazō — trial/temptation) [NEW, High]	Single Manipuri lexeme must carry two distinct Greek senses (external testing that refines faith vs. internal enticement to sin) that James himself deliberately puns on across 1:2-3 and 1:13-14. No natural Manipuri word-pair cleanly splits these senses the way some receptor languages’ vocabulary happens to.	Retain one term (চাংলবা) for lexical/stylistic fidelity to James’s wordplay, but attach an explicit sense-marker translator note at every occurrence specifying which sense is active, with 1:13 requiring the strongest note (God tests but never entices to sin). This is a structural gap, not a solvable lexical one — flag as a permanent annotation requirement rather than seek a two-word solution that would erase the pun.
খুদোংচাবা (steadfastness/endurance) [NEW, High]	Risk of being reheard as fatalistic resignation, the register the baseline explicitly forbids for ৱাইফম-adjacent providence language.	Teach explicitly as active, hope-filled perseverance grounded in God’s character (cross-reference তেংবাং মপুগী থৌরাং, 4:15/Romans 8:28), never passive acceptance of an impersonal outcome.
থাজবা চাংলবগী থৌদাং (testing/proving, dokimion)	Low collision risk; descriptive compound built transparently from already-cleared morphemes.	No further gap-closing needed; retain as coined.
থাওয়াই অনি (double-minded, dipsychos) [NEW, High, UNCONFIRMED]	This is a genuine missing-vocabulary problem, not merely a crowded-neighborhood one: a literal “two-souled/two-spirited” compound risks being heard as describing possession by two competing spirit-entities, a real, named category in Sanamahi spirit-affliction belief (distinct from, though adjacent to, Umang Lai veneration). This is a lexical gap requiring resolution before Phase 2, not a teaching-layer fix, because the collision is at the level of what the compound denotes, not how it’s explained.	RECOMMENDED: commission a native-speaker-confirmed non-literal descriptive alternative (e.g., a phrase built on “wavering heart/mind” rather than “two spirits”) before Phase 2 deployment. থাওয়াই অনি should be treated as provisional pending this confirmation, not as settled. Flag for Step 9 (native speaker review) as highest lexical priority.
পাম্বা (desire/lust, epithymia)	Must be fenced from Vaishnava bhakti’s cultivated devotional longing (prema/kama reoriented toward Krishna) — a crowded-neighborhood risk, not a missing-vocabulary one.	Teach explicitly as disordered craving producing sin, contrasted with properly directed longing; no lexical change needed.
সিবা (death, thanatos) [REUSED root, Critical]	Shares root family with the baseline’s resurrection term; risk of blending with পুনর্জন্ম-adjacent rebirth-cycle framing if not anchored.	Reuse exactly; teach as separation from God, never a transition point in a cycle, mirroring baseline caution.

3. Wisdom from Above (James 1:5, 3:13-18)

Available Manipuri terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
লৌহুম (wisdom, sophia) [NEW, High]	Must be fenced from any oracular insight attributed to a maibi in Lai Haraoba trance (an actively practiced, currently live spiritual-authority category), per the baseline’s existing caution on spiritual_gifts/শক্তি.	Teach explicitly as God-given practical skill for righteous living, granted through prayerful request (1:5), never trance-mediated.
মথাক্তগী লৌহুম (wisdom from above) [NEW, High]	Positive pole is doctrinally clean but depends entirely on the negative-pole contrast terms below being correctly fenced; standing alone it risks sounding like one spiritual-insight source among several available sources in Manipur’s plural religious economy.	Always teach as a paired triad with মালেমগী লৌহুম and অসুবা থাওয়াইগী লৌহুম (3:15-17) so the source-contrast (God alone vs. earthly vs. demonic) is never presented in isolation.
মালেমগী লৌহুম (earthly wisdom)	Reuses মালেম; low collision risk on its own.	Characterize by fruit (envy, selfish ambition), not by association with a specific tradition’s body of teaching.
অসুবা থাওয়াইগী লৌহুম (demonic wisdom) [NEW, Critical]	Highest risk in this doctrine cluster: must not be heard as a blanket verdict on the maibi’s Lai Haraoba oracular office as an institution, since Sanamahi practice does not itself classify this office as demonic.	Restrict teaching strictly to the character of the wisdom described (envy, strife, disorder) as diagnostic markers, explicitly declining to render a verdict on any named traditional office. Theologian review required (already flagged).
অচুম্বা চৎনবিরাক্কী মহৈ (fruit of righteousness)	Low risk; useful typological echo of the baseline’s incarnation-compound মহৈ usage.	Retain as coined; no further action needed.

4. Favoritism and the Poor (James 1:9-11, 2:1-13)

Available Manipuri terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
মমাই য়েংবা (favoritism) [NEW, High]	Carries acute contemporary political weight given ongoing inter-community/clan (yumnak) sensitivities in Manipur; risk is not mistranslation but misapplication — a teacher could map this doctrine directly onto current ethnic-community conflict rather than the socioeconomic favoritism James actually addresses.	Ground exclusively in তেংবাং মপুগী মমাংদা শেমখিবা (image of God, 3:9) and economic status distinctions (2:2-3); explicit curriculum note that this doctrine is not a coded commentary on any specific contemporary Manipur inter-community relationship.
চানবিবা (mercy, eleos) [NEW, High]	Sits immediately beside Vaishnava bhakti’s well-developed কৃপা/করুণা (Krishna’s compassionate favor, understood as responsive to a devotee’s bhakti/seva) — a crowded-neighborhood risk directly parallel to the baseline’s grace/কৃপা caution.	Teach as compassion flowing from God’s own character, imitated horizontally toward the poor, never as a devotional transaction that builds standing with God. Cross-reference the baseline’s grace entry explicitly in teaching materials.
ৱায়েল (judgment, krisis) [NEW, Medium]	Positive cultural resonance as the term for customary Meitei village/clan dispute-resolution — a “false friend” risk (over-familiarity rather than absence): readers may import an expectation of negotiated settlement.	Teach explicitly that God’s ৱায়েল is final and universal, not open to negotiated settlement, unlike its customary-institution namesake.
মশক লৈবা মিওই / মশক লৈতবা মিওই (rich/poor) [NEW, Medium-High]	Risk of importing a karmic-merit framing of wealth/poverty (wealth as reward, poverty as deficit) absorbed from the region’s Vaishnava environment.	Teach James’s point as eschatological reversal (1:9-11) and God’s electing generosity toward the poor (2:5), explicitly setting aside any merit-desert reading.

5. Taming the Tongue (James 1:26, 3:1-12)

Available Manipuri terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
লে (tongue, glōssa) [NEW, UNCONFIRMED LEXEME]	This is the book’s single clearest missing-vocabulary-confidence gap: doctrinal risk is only Medium, but lexical confidence is High-risk because this centrally load-bearing term (occurring across the entire doctrine) has not yet been confirmed against a current printed Manipuri Bible edition.	MANDATORY: confirm লে against the BSI Manipuri Bible (or the most current available printed edition) before any Phase 2 work on chapter 3. This blocks the entire doctrine cluster, not just one verse — every other term in this row depends structurally on লে (লে থীংবা is a direct compound on it).
লে থীংবা (bridle/control)	Entirely dependent on লে’s confirmation above.	Hold pending লে confirmation; re-verify compound naturalness with the same native-speaker reviewer at the same time.
মেই (fire, pyr)	Well-attested word, low lexical risk; doctrinal risk is Medium as a metaphor requiring scope-teaching (small flame, great forest).	Retain; teach the proportion metaphor explicitly.
নরক (hell/Gehenna, geenna) [NEW, Critical]	Shared directly with Hindu/Vaishnava cosmology’s নরক realm(s), which in that system permit eventual release or rebirth — a crowded-neighborhood collision of the same class as মোক্ষ/পুনর্জন্ম in the baseline.	Teach explicitly as fixed and final under God’s judgment, never a stage within a cycle, using the exact category of caution the baseline applies to its own forbidden-substitution list. Theologian review required at every occurrence.
শিরাপ পীবা (curse)	Low risk; doctrinal weight rests on adjoining তেংবাং মপুগী মমাংদা শেমখিবা (image of God) teaching.	Retain as coined.

6. Worldliness versus Friendship with God (James 1:27, 4:1-10)

Available Manipuri terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
থাজবগী চৎনবিরাক (true religion, thrēskeia) [NEW, Critical]	The single most syncretism-exposed term in the entire book: Greek thrēskeia’s normal sense (ritual/cultic observance) sits precisely in the register where both live Manipuri traditions concentrate their visible practice (Sanamahi ritual at Umang Lai groves; Vaishnava temple/Ras Lila devotional observance). Any rendering leaning toward “ritual practice” would accidentally affirm what James is redefining away from.	Never use the baseline’s reserved শেংবা (ritual purity) or লাইনিং (devotional union). Retain থাজবগী চৎনবিরাক as an explicit redefinition-teaching term: “religion” relocated from ritual observance to ethical practice (orphan/widow care, 1:27). This must be taught, not merely translated — a standalone lexical choice cannot carry this redefinition alone.
মালেম (world, kosmos) [NEW, High]	Sanamahi tradition holds the natural world (forests, sacred groves) as the Umang Lai’s dwelling-place; James’s “worldliness” teaching must not be misheard as opposition to nature/creation itself.	Teach explicitly as the fallen human value-system organized against God, never the created order; this caution must recur at every occurrence (1:27, 4:4, and the derived compounds মালেমগী লৌহুম, মালেমগী মরুপ ওইবা).
মালেমগী মরুপ ওইবা (friendship with the world) / তেংবাং মপুগী মরুপ (friend of God) [Critical pairing]	These two phrases form a deliberate either/or literary pair (4:4 vs 2:23) that must be taught together; teaching either in isolation loses James’s rhetorical structure.	Preserve and explicitly teach the pairing as opposites at every occurrence of either phrase.
তেংবাং মপুগী য়েক্লবা ওইবা (enmity with God)	Low independent risk; corollary of the friendship-with-world pairing above.	Teach as the necessary consequence of worldliness, preserving James’s either/or structure.
শয়তান (the devil, diabolos) [NEW, Critical]	Must be distinguished from (a) Sanamahi ancestral/nature spirits (Apokpa, Umang Lai — venerated, not classed as malevolent) and (b) named Puranic asura-antagonists defeated within a completed mythological narrative cycle.	Teach as a singular, ongoing spiritual adversary in active present-tense rebellion, not a defeated mythological figure from a closed past narrative.
থাওয়াই (pneuma, disputed at 4:5) [AMBIGUITY FLAG, High]	Genuinely disputed exegetically (human spirit vs. Holy Spirit reading); no lexical choice can resolve this — it is a translation-committee decision, not a linguistic gap that vocabulary can close.	Do NOT default to থাওয়াই অসেংবা without explicit committee review. Record both readings as alternatives_considered; flag for theologian review before Phase 2 lock-in.

7. Prayer and Healing (James 5:13-18)

Available Manipuri terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
থাউনা ৎিংবা (anointing with oil) [NEW, Critical]	The single highest collision-risk practice-term in the entire book: structurally resembles both (a) a maiba’s oil/herb application within an indigenous medicine/spirit-appeasement ritual, and (b) Vaishnava abhisheka (ritual anointing of a deity’s image). This is a crowded-neighborhood problem at the level of ritual practice, not vocabulary — no word choice alone resolves it.	No lexical substitute closes this gap; the solution is mandatory explanatory teaching at every occurrence establishing that efficacy rests entirely on God’s sovereign will answering faith-filled prayer offered in the Lord’s name — not on the oil’s inherent power, the elder’s personal potency, or structural equivalence to either comparandum practice. Theologian review required at every occurrence.
অহানবা (sōzō, physical healing sense) [REUSED — CONTEXT-SENSITIVE, Critical]	Reuses the baseline’s Critical eternal-salvation term for a distinct physical-healing sense; risk of readers concluding physical healing is guaranteed to every prayed-for believer, or that non-healing signals deficient eternal salvation.	Mandatory translator note at 5:15 distinguishing the bodily-healing sense from eternal salvation; never allow silent conflation.
থাজবগী হায়জবগী চাউবা পাংথোক্না (prayer of a righteous person, great power) [NEW, High]	Risk of being heard as attributing independent, mantra-like efficacious power to the prayer-utterance itself, paralleling how some ritual formulas are popularly understood to function autonomously.	Teach explicitly that the power belongs to God who answers, not to the utterance as a self-effective spiritual technology; anchor to the Elijah example (5:17-18) as answered-prayer narrative, not incantation.
অহলশিং (elders) [NEW, Medium]	Must be distinguished from village/clan elder councils (a real, separate customary-authority institution) and from maiba/religious-specialist roles.	Teach as a specific congregational office, distinct from both customary-authority and ritual-specialist categories.

8. Patience and the Lord’s Return (James 5:7-11)

Available Manipuri terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
মপু ইবুংগোগী হন্না লাক্লগদবা (the Lord’s coming) [NEW, Critical]	Manipuri Vaishnavism holds a structurally similar “awaited future divine coming” expectation: Kalki, Vishnu’s future/final avatar anticipated at the close of the current cosmic age in Puranic tradition, appearing to end corruption and restore righteousness. This is a genuine crowded-neighborhood risk at the level of eschatological structure, not merely vocabulary.	Teach explicitly as the definite, personal, bodily return of the same historical Jesus who already came, died, and rose once — never assimilated to a cyclical avatar-sequence’s next installment. Theologian review required at every occurrence.
থমোইনা ঙাকপা (patience, makrothymia) [NEW, High]	Must be kept distinct from খুদোংচাবা (1:3-4, active endurance under trial pressure) — a different posture (patient waiting for a promised future event vs. active perseverance under present pressure).	Teach both terms side by side with explicit contrast at 5:7-11; do not allow them to be used interchangeably in curriculum materials.

9. Confession and Restoration (James 5:16, 5:19-20)

Available Manipuri terms	Weaknesses	Recommended strategy
পাপ ফোংদোকপা (confess sins) [NEW, High]	Must be distinguished from ritual confession before a maibi/priest in a Lai Haraoba atonement rite, or Vaishnava prayaschitta (penance) confession requiring a guru/religious specialist as intermediary.	Teach as mutual, congregational confession among ordinary believers with no required ritual-specialist intermediary.
থাওয়াই সিবদগী কান্দোকপা (save a soul from death) [NEW, High]	Combines the generic soul/life sense of থাওয়াই (not Holy Spirit) with সিবা (death as separation, not rebirth) — a compound risk inherited from both component terms’ individual cautions.	Both component cautions apply jointly; a single translator note covering both is sufficient rather than two separate notes.
পাপ লিপ্পা (cover a multitude of sins) [NEW, High]	Risk of being heard as ritual concealment of guilt (parallel to a ritual atonement practice managing guilt symbolically) rather than God’s actual forgiveness.	Teach as God’s own gracious forgiveness accomplished through genuine repentance and restoration, never symbolic guilt-management.

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Part 2: Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

This distinction matters for remediation strategy: a missing-vocabulary gap requires coining or confirming a new term (a lexical task, often needing native-speaker input); a crowded-neighborhood gap requires fencing an existing/coined term against a live rival meaning already present in the culture (a teaching/annotation task, not a lexical one). Several James terms require both simultaneously.

Missing Vocabulary (lexical gaps requiring new coinage or confirmation)

Term	Gap type	Status
লে (tongue)	Lexical-confidence gap: term proposed but not yet confirmed against a current printed Manipuri Bible	BLOCKING — confirm before Ch. 3 Phase 2 work
থাওয়াই অনি (double-minded)	True missing-vocabulary gap: no existing Manipuri compound cleanly names “wavering/inwardly divided” without invoking Sanamahi’s populated spirit-possession category	Recommend native-speaker-sourced non-literal alternative before Phase 2
থাজবা চাংলবগী থৌদাং (testing/proving)	Filled by descriptive compounding from cleared morphemes; no further gap	Resolved — retain as coined
থাজবগী চৎনবিরাক (true religion)	Not a missing word so much as a missing category: Manipuri religious vocabulary has no existing term for “ethical practice redefined away from ritual observance,” because both live local traditions organize the religion/ritual relationship differently than James’s argument requires	Resolved by descriptive compounding + mandatory teaching-layer redefinition; monitor in Phase 2 pilot testing for naturalness
থাউনা ৎিংবা (anointing with oil)	Not missing vocabulary — Manipuri has ready words for “oil” and “apply/anoint” — but the practice it describes has no unclaimed semantic space; every available phrasing lands inside an occupied ritual category	Not a coinage problem; a teaching/framing problem (see Part 1, Doctrine 7)

Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (existing/coined terms needing explicit fencing)

Term / Concept	Occupying neighbor(s)	Fencing strategy required
থবক (works)	Vaishnava সেবা (merit-building devotional service)	Explicit “evidence not price” framing at every occurrence in 2:14-26
তেংবাং মপুগী মরুপ (friend of God)	Vaishnava sakhya bhāva (friendship-mode bhakti)	Contrastive teaching note: God-initiated covenant intimacy vs. devotee-initiated devotional friendship
চানবিবা (mercy)	Vaishnava কৃপা/করুণা (devotee-responsive divine favor)	Cross-reference baseline grace/কৃপা caution; teach as imitated horizontal compassion, not devotional transaction
নরক (hell)	Hindu/Vaishnava নরক realms (impermanent, cycle-embedded)	Teach as fixed/final judgment, never a cyclical stage
মপু ইবুংগোগী হন্না লাক্লগদবা (Lord’s coming)	Vaishnava Kalki-avatar expectation	Teach as the same historical Jesus returning once, not a next avatar-installment
অসুবা থাওয়াইগী লৌহুম (demonic wisdom)	Maibi Lai Haraoba oracular office (not itself classed demonic in Sanamahi belief)	Restrict to character-diagnosis (envy/strife), decline to render institutional verdict
থাউনা ৎিংবা (anointing with oil)	Maiba oil/herb ritual healing; Vaishnava abhisheka	Teach efficacy as resting on God alone answering faith-filled prayer
ৱায়েল (judgment)	Customary Meitei village/clan dispute-resolution assembly (positive over-familiarity)	Teach as final/non-negotiable, unlike its customary namesake
মালেম (world)	Sanamahi reverence for forest/grove as Umang Lai dwelling	Teach as fallen value-system, never the created order itself
থাওয়াই (generic spirit/soul, 2:26, 4:5, 5:20)	Sanamahi’s populated spirit-world (Apokpa ancestral spirits, Umang Lai)	Bare থাওয়াই permitted ONLY in these generic-life-sense contexts, per baseline rule; never upgrade to থাওয়াই অসেংবা without committee review at 4:5

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Part 3: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

James requires fewer transliteration decisions than Romans (fewer proper nouns, fewer transliterated technical terms), but the ones it does require follow directly from baseline precedent.

Item	Decision	Rationale
Abraham, Isaac, Rahab, Job, Elijah	Transliterate (আব্রাহাম, ইসহাক, রাহাব, যোব, এলিয়া)	Standard proper-name convention, following baseline pattern (দাউদ, ইস্রায়েল)
ক্রিস্তো / জিসু (if Christ/Jesus occur in James, e.g. 1:1, 2:1)	Transliterate exactly as baseline	Exact reuse mandatory; no new decision required
শয়তান (the devil)	Transliterate/loanword (already naturalized in regional Christian vocabulary) rather than paraphrase with a Sanamahi- or Puranic-specific term	Avoids importing either tradition’s specific antagonist-figure connotations; শয়তান is a religiously neutral loan already used across South Asian Christian literature
থাউ (oil)	Paraphrase with the plain Meitei word, not a transliterated Sanskrit/liturgical term	থাউ is already the ordinary Meitei word for oil; no transliteration needed, but see Part 1 for the surrounding practice-level caution
Kalki, avatar, prayaschitta, abhisheka, sakhya bhāva, seva (comparative-religion reference terms used only in teacher-facing notes, never in the translated Scripture text itself)	Do NOT transliterate into the Scripture translation; retain only as teacher-facing/annotation vocabulary in curriculum materials, exactly as the baseline does with অবতার, মোক্ষ, কৃপা	Consistent with baseline’s forbidden-substitution convention: comparative terms are named and taught around, never absorbed into the translated text
নরক (hell/Gehenna)	Retain as an existing loanword rather than coin a wholly new term	No untainted alternative exists in current Manipuri Christian usage; the risk is managed through mandatory fencing (Part 2), not through avoiding the word
ৎিংবা / থাউনা ৎিংবা (anoint)	Paraphrase descriptively rather than borrow a Sanskrit-liturgical anointing term (e.g., abhisheka-derived vocabulary)	A descriptive Meitei phrase avoids directly importing Vaishnava ritual vocabulary into the Scripture text; risk is instead managed at the teaching layer

General transliteration principle for James: where the baseline already fixed a transliterated form (proper names, ক্রিস্তো, শয়তান-class loanwords), reuse it exactly. Where James introduces a new practice-term with heavy ritual-collision potential (anointing with oil, hell/Gehenna), prefer an existing plain Meitei descriptive word over any new Sanskrit- or Vaishnava-liturgical-adjacent loan, and manage the residual collision risk through mandatory teaching notes rather than through further lexical engineering — engineering a “cleaner” word here would likely produce an unnatural neologism without actually removing the underlying practice-level collision.

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Part 4: Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in James

Ranked by combined doctrinal severity and probability of misreading, considering both lexical-confidence risk and comparative-religion collision risk.

1. অচুম্বা ওইহনবা (justified) — dual-sense harmonization, James 2 vs. Romans 3-4. Highest rank because it is not merely a collision with an external tradition but an internal-canon consistency risk: a reader could conclude Scripture contradicts itself on justification, the curriculum’s central doctrine. Mandatory Genesis-15:6/Genesis-22 timeline harmonization note at every occurrence.

2. থাউনা ৎিংবা (anointing with oil) — triple collision with maiba ritual, Vaishnava abhisheka, and popular guaranteed-healing expectation. Highest-severity live-practice collision in the book; no lexical fix available, only mandatory theological framing at every occurrence.

3. তেংবাং মপুগী মরুপ (friend of God) / মালেমগী মরুপ ওইবা (friendship with world) pairing — sakhya bhakti collision. A currently, actively practiced devotional category (not a historical remnant) sits directly under this term; James’s own deliberate either/or literary structure must be preserved and taught as a unit, or the doctrinal payload of both halves is lost.

4. মপু ইবুংগোগী হন্না লাক্লগদবা (the Lord’s coming) — Kalki-avatar structural collision. Both traditions genuinely share an “awaited future divine coming to end corruption” narrative shape, making this a structural rather than merely lexical collision; requires the same mandatory framing rigor as অবতার elsewhere in the baseline.

5. থাওয়াই at James 4:5 — unresolved textual/exegetical ambiguity plus Sanamahi populated-spirit-world collision if wrongly upgraded to থাওয়াই অসেংবা. This is a double risk: the Greek itself is genuinely disputed (a linguistic-source ambiguity independent of Manipuri), compounded by the destination-language risk of accidentally invoking the wrong spirit-category if the wrong resolution is chosen. Requires committee-level exegetical decision before any lexical commitment.

6. থাওয়াই অনি (double-minded) — unresolved lexical-confidence gap with spirit-possession collision. Ranked here rather than higher because, unlike items 1-5, this is a coinage problem that a native-speaker consultation can likely resolve cleanly before Phase 2, rather than a permanent structural tension requiring ongoing teaching-layer management.

7. লে (tongue) — pure lexical-confidence gap, blocking an entire doctrine cluster. Ranked lower in doctrinal severity (no live-tradition collision once confirmed) but functionally blocking: until confirmed, no term in the “Taming the Tongue” doctrine can be finalized, since লে থীংবা is a direct compound on it.

8. অসুবা থাওয়াইগী লৌহুম (demonic wisdom) — risk of an unintended institutional verdict on the maibi’s oracular office. Manageable through careful scope-restriction (character of the wisdom, not the office), but requires vigilance since James’s own vocabulary (daimoniōdēs) invites exactly this overreach.

9. নরক (hell) — shared cosmological vocabulary with a differently-structured afterlife system. A known, well-precedented risk class (parallel to মোক্ষ/পুনর্জন্ম in the baseline); ranked lower because the fencing strategy is already well-established and simply needs consistent application.

10. থবক (works) vs. সেবা — merit-framework collision. Ranked lowest among the Critical/High-severity items because James’s own argument structure (faith-then-works, evidenced by the Abraham timeline) does much of the fencing work internally; the curriculum’s harmonization notes for justification (item 1) substantially cover this risk as well.

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Summary for Phase 2 Readiness

• Blocking items requiring resolution before Phase 2 begins: লে (tongue) confirmation; থাওয়াই অনি (double-minded) alternative-phrasing consultation; থাওয়াই at James 4:5 committee decision on exegetical reading.
• Non-blocking but mandatory-annotation items: all Critical-risk terms identified in Part 1 (অচুম্বা ওইহনবা, তেংবাং মপুগী মরুপ, থাউনা ৎিংবা, মপু ইবুংগোগী হন্না লাক্লগদবা, নরক, অসুবা থাওয়াইগী লৌহুম, থাজবগী চৎনবিরাক, শয়তান, অহানবা physical-healing sense) — these may proceed to Phase 2 translation but require the escalation and translator-note protocols already established in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md, extended to cover this curriculum’s new Critical terms in the forthcoming update to that document.
• No wholesale new theological category was found requiring invention from nothing — James’s vocabulary gaps are overwhelmingly either (a) confidence gaps in already-proposed coinages, or (b) crowded-neighborhood fencing tasks against Manipur’s two live traditions, consistent with the pattern the baseline Romans package already established and validated.