Linguistic Gap Analysis

Some Romans concepts have no single-word Marathi equivalent at all, and require compound phrases or borrowed/transliterated terms to convey accurately — and, distinctively in this Language Package, some require building an entirely new concept for Buddhist-background readers rather than correcting a false friend.

Terms requiring compound phrases

• Justification (नीतिमान ठरवणे — “to be declared righteous”): no single Marathi word captures the forensic, legal-declaration sense of justification. The compound phrase is required in full; it must never be abbreviated to a single word, which would lose the “declared,” not “made,” distinction.
• Imputed righteousness (आरोपित नीतिमत्त्व — “credited righteousness”): distinguishes righteousness credited to a believer from righteousness earned through self-labor (स्वकष्टार्जित नीतिमत्त्व, explicitly rejected — a phrase that names both the Hindu merit path and the Buddhist Eightfold Path’s self-cultivation emphasis). This distinction has no everyday Marathi equivalent and must be taught, not assumed.
• Spiritual gifts (आत्मिक कृपादान): must be a compound; वरदान alone reads as a deity’s boon, and सिद्धी alone reads as a yogic/ascetic attained power.

Terms requiring a concept built from nothing (not merely corrected)

• Grace: for a reader formed by Navayana Buddhist ethics, in which every good outcome is the fruit of one’s own disciplined practice, the idea of an unearned gift from an external, personal source has no ready conceptual slot at all. This needs more scaffolding than the “not merit, but gift” correction sufficient for a Warkari-Hindu-background reader, who at least has a devotional-grace vocabulary (even if it needs sharpening).
• Resurrection and assurance of selfhood: Buddhist anatta (no permanent self) teaching means a reader may find the very premise — that the same continuous person who died is the one raised, and that the same continuous person can hold assurance of salvation — philosophically unfamiliar territory, not just a wrongly-labeled familiar idea.

Terms requiring transliteration rather than translation

• Messiah / Christ (मसीहा / ख्रिस्त): transliterated rather than translated, since no Marathi word carries the specific Jewish messianic-fulfillment sense without importing unrelated connotations.
• Abba (अब्बा): the Aramaic term of intimacy in Romans 8:15 is kept as a transliteration rather than translated to the formal पिता, because the informal filial intimacy Paul is pointing to would otherwise be lost.

Gap-filling strategy

Where no natural Marathi equivalent exists, this Language Package prefers an established compound or transliterated form already in use in Marathi Christian literature over inventing a new coinage — consistency with existing usage outweighs elegance of a novel phrase.