Executive Summary — 2 Corinthians — English → Nepali

Why it matters

2 Corinthians brings Paul’s most personally exposed, theologically dense letter to a Nepali church that is young, historically restricted, and living inside a religious-vocabulary landscape shaped by Hindu Kingdom history, Newar Tantric practice, Himalayan Buddhism, and a current legal code that still constrains open proclamation. The core passage (5:11-21) — reconciliation, new creation, substitutionary atonement — sits at the exact point where Nepali cosmological vocabulary (सृष्टि, संसार, मिलाप) is most likely to be misheard through cyclical, karma-merit, or ritual-appeasement frames the baseline Romans package was not built to fully anticipate. This Language Package extends that baseline without contradicting it and gives Phase 2 translators a full-book, chapter-by-chapter enforcement system before any segment translation begins.

Key findings

• 85 terms now live in the extended translation_memory.json: 31 inherited exactly from the Romans baseline, 54 newly introduced by 2 Corinthians.
• 24 Critical-risk terms total (11 inherited + 13 new) and 27 High-risk terms total (11 inherited + 16 new) — every one requires human theologian review under the escalation rules.
• 27 doctrines tracked in doctrine_risk_registry.json: 12 Critical, 11 High, 2 Medium, 2 Low — 23 of 27 doctrines require human theologian review, 2 require native speaker review, 2 are automated-only.
• Chapter 5 (the core passage) is the single highest-density chapter in the book for Critical-tier terms — Reconciliation, New Creation, Substitutionary Atonement, and Lordship of Christ all converge in eleven verses.
• Three new risk classes emerge that the Romans baseline did not need to address: bibliographic homonym collision (नयाँ करार / पुरानो करार also naming the NT/OT canon), merit-generating giving vocabulary (दान/चढ़ावा/भेटी/दक्षिणा crowding chs. 8-9), and honor-shame-driven euphemism risk (दुर्बलता being softened to नम्रता in ch. 12-13).

Risks

• Critical: मिलाप (reconciliation) misread as human-initiated jhankri/dhami ritual appeasement rather than God’s unilateral act (5:18-20).
• Critical: नयाँ सृष्टि (new creation) defaulting to Hindu cyclical srishti-sthiti-pralaya cosmology instead of a decisive, one-time transformation (5:17).
• Critical: संसार (kosmos, 5:19) read through the samsara-rebirth lens inside the core passage itself.
• Critical: यस युगका देवता (4:4) — the deliberate, singular use of देवता for Satan’s counterfeit title — misunderstood as blurring the परमेश्वर/भगवान guard rather than reinforcing it.
• High: दान-shaped cultural giving-schema (chs. 8-9) quietly reintroducing merit-accumulation into a grace-based collection appeal.
• High: गर्व/boasting (chs. 1, 5, 10-12) flattened from Paul’s paradoxical irony into neutral self-report under pressure for “natural” Nepali.
• High: मुक्ति temptation at 3:17 — a rare positive-valence freedom context that makes the forbidden term sound unusually attractive.

Opportunities

• The Nepali church’s own recent history of legal restriction gives सहभागिता (fellowship) and सान्त्वना (comfort) unusual, lived resonance in chs. 1, 7, and 13 — a genuine teaching asset, not just a risk to manage.
• The visible cultural competition among gurus, sadhus, and jhankri/dhami figures for reputation and demonstrated potency offers a ready-made, locally intelligible bridge for teaching chs. 10-12’s genuine-vs-false-apostleship argument, provided the corrective (gospel fidelity and self-giving sacrifice over display) is made explicit.
• देवता’s deliberate, single controlled use for Satan’s counterfeit title (4:4) is a rhetorically powerful, doctrinally safe teaching moment precisely because it sharpens rather than blurs the परमेश्वर distinction already established in Romans.

Recommended actions

1. Route 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 in its entirety to human theologian review as a single non-divisible unit before any other chapter, given its unmatched Critical-tier density.
2. Apply the mandatory disambiguating gloss for नयाँ करार / पुरानो करार at every ch. 3 occurrence to prevent the bibliographic New Testament/Old Testament collision from derailing comprehension of the New Covenant doctrine.
3. Add गुरु, लामा, दान, चढ़ावा, भेटी, दक्षिणा, दुःख, नम्रता (as a weakness-euphemism), मेलमिलाप, सुलह to the enforced forbidden-substitution list for this curriculum specifically, on top of the inherited Romans forbidden list.
4. Lock 2 Corinthians 13:14 (the Trinitarian benediction) to a single fixed, verbatim rendering across every future curriculum document, matching the precedent already set for Romans 8:28 and 10:9-10.
5. Prioritize native speaker review escalation triggers for chs. 8-9 (giving) and chs. 10-13 (boasting, weakness, apostleship) where cultural drift is most likely even after correct term selection.

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This summary reflects assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md, analysis/08_core_glossary.md, analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, analysis/06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md, and analysis/04_comparative_theology.md, all generated for this curriculum and consistent with the baseline Romans Language Package.