Executive Summary — Acts — English → Nepali

Why it matters: Acts extends the Romans Language Package into narrative territory — Pentecost, Gentile inclusion, persecution, and Paul’s conversion — where Nepal’s living religious landscape (Hindu-kingdom legacy, murti-puja devotion, Newar Tantric and Kumari practice, dhami-jhankri shamanism, and current anti-conversion law) creates collision risks that the epistolary Romans text never had to confront directly. Getting this glossary right determines whether Nepali readers encounter Acts as the unique, historical account it is, or unintentionally read it through Hindu rebirth, Buddhist attainment, caste-purity, or guru-devotion frames baked into everyday vocabulary.

Key findings:

• Acts introduces 53 new load-bearing terms beyond the 42 inherited Romans-baseline terms relevant to this book — 95 terms total now governed by translation memory.
• 54 of those 95 terms (15 Critical + 39 High) require absolute, no-substitution enforcement and mandatory theologian-level scrutiny at every occurrence.
• The book maps to 33 tracked doctrines, of which 31 (11 Critical + 20 High) require mandatory human theologian review; only 1 doctrine requires native-speaker-only review and 1 is automated-only.
• The single highest-discipline point in the entire curriculum is the κοινός split: the identical Greek root behind Acts 10–11’s abolished ceremonial “unclean” category (अशुद्ध) and Acts 2/4’s “held in common” possessions (साझा) must never share vocabulary — conflating them either re-legitimizes caste-purity codes or trivializes the Gentile-inclusion narrative that is the chapter’s entire point.
• Four other terms carry the sharpest live cultural-collision risk in the book: मूर्ति (idols, against contemporary murti-puja devotion), अज्ञात परमेश्वर (unknown god, against a perennialist “all paths” misreading), बाटो (the Way, against मार्ग’s collision with Buddhist/Hindu soteriological “path” vocabulary), and दृश्य (vision, against दर्शन’s Hindu devotional deity-beholding sense).
• Acts 2:1–41, the curriculum’s core passage, is also its single highest-density risk zone: it alone touches 13 of the 33 tracked doctrines, including three Critical-tier Christological claims (Lordship, Deity, Resurrection) inside one continuous sermon.

Risks:

• Doctrinal collapse risk: Acts 13:38–39’s justification statement and Acts 2:38’s repentance-baptism-forgiveness-gift sequence can each silently collapse two or more distinct forensic/pastoral concepts into one if माफी or वरदान are used unpaired — both are explicitly guarded against in translation memory.
• Legal-sensitivity risk: Evangelism, mission, and “unhindered” proclamation language (1:8; 8:4; 13:1–3; 16:9–10; 26:16–18; 28:31) sits against the live backdrop of Nepal’s 2017 Muluki Criminal Code anti-conversion provisions; teaching material must stay pastorally confident without reading as legal-defiance encouragement.
• Syncretism risk: Tongues, signs and wonders, and sorcery/magic passages (chs. 2, 8, 13, 19) sit directly beside living Nepali Tantric, dhami-jhankri, and astrological practice; mishandling risks either flattening the text’s exclusive claims or mocking practicing communities.
• Cross-document consistency risk: The “call on the name of the Lord” salvation formula (Acts 2:21; 16:30–31; 22:16) must match the Romans 10:13 rendering exactly; this is flagged as a blocking dependency if Romans 10:13 has not yet been finalized in shared translation memory.

Opportunities:

• Acts’ persecution and bold-witness narrative (chs. 4–5, 7, 12, 16, 21–26) can be taught with unusual resonance for this specific audience, given Nepal’s own recent history of legally restricted Christian practice until 1990 — साक्षी and निर्भीकता are not abstract concepts here but lived history.
• The Cornelius narrative’s no-partiality doctrine (10:34) offers a uniquely direct, textually-grounded engagement with Nepal’s own caste-hierarchy legacy (the Muluki Ain, in force until 1963), a live pastoral entry point most translation traditions do not have this concretely available.
• The Jerusalem Council’s grace-versus-law resolution (ch. 15) gives Nepali teaching material a strong, narrative-driven (not merely propositional) vehicle for the grace-apart-from-merit doctrine already established as High-risk in the Romans baseline.

Recommended actions:

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json (Acts version, 95 terms) and confirm all 54 Critical/High entries are wired into Phase 2 tooling before any segment translation begins.
2. Treat the अशुद्ध/साझा (κοινός) disambiguation as a blocking validation rule, not a flaggable warning, per 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
3. Confirm the Romans 10:13 rendering is finalized in shared translation memory before processing any Acts segment containing the “call on the name of the Lord” formula (2:21; 16:30–31; 22:16).
4. Route all 31 theologian-review doctrines and all Acts 2:1–41 core-passage segments to human theologian review at highest priority, consistent with doctrine_risk_registry.json and 11_doctrine_analysis.md.
5. Brief native-speaker reviewers specifically on the pastoral-tone requirements for persecution, sorcery/magic, and evangelism passages, given their combined doctrinal weight and current legal sensitivity in Nepal.

---

This summary is derived from and must remain consistent with analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, analysis/08_core_glossary.md, analysis/11_doctrine_analysis.md, analysis/04_comparative_theology.md, analysis/06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md, analysis/05_translation_landscape.md, assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, and assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json.