Executive Summary

Why it matters

Romans is the theological backbone of the New Testament, and Nepali carries a doctrinal-translation risk unlike any other language in this pipeline: it must guard against Hindu and Buddhist syncretism simultaneously on the same core terms, and its highest-risk doctrine, incarnation, collides with a state ideology of royal divine avatarship that only ended with the 2008 abolition of the Nepali monarchy — living memory, not ancient history.

Key findings

• The registry tracks 40 doctrines across Romans 1-16; 30 require mandatory human theologian review before any translated segment ships (7 Critical, 23 High).
• Salvation is dual-front Critical risk: this Language Package rejects both मुक्ति/मोक्ष (Hindu liberation from rebirth) and निर्वाण (the Buddhist cessation of craving and self), a two-front guard not required in single-religious-context languages.
• Evangelism is raised to High risk specifically for Nepali, above the Medium level typical elsewhere in this pipeline, because Nepal’s 2017 Muluki Criminal Code contains live legal restrictions on religious conversion — this is a current legal exposure, not merely a cultural-sensitivity concern.
• Universal Scope of the Gospel and Universal Human Accountability carry extra historical weight here: Nepal’s caste hierarchy was formally codified in state law (the 1854 Muluki Ain) until 1963, so Romans’ “no distinction” language directly answers a specific, recent legal history, not an abstract social pattern.

Risks

• Dual religious-syncretism risk: Hindu-coded wrong answers (avatar, moksha, dharma-as-duty) and Buddhist-coded wrong answers (nirvana, rebirth across six realms, tulku reincarnation) each independently threaten the same core doctrines.
• State-ideology entanglement: avatar theology in Nepal was not only a Hindu religious idea but the literal constitutional-monarchical legitimating claim of the Nepali state until recently, giving “incarnation” unusual real-world resonance.
• Live legal exposure for evangelism content: unlike most other languages in this batch, proclamation-of-the-gospel language here intersects with an actual, currently enforced anti-conversion legal framework.

Opportunities

• Nepali already has an established, settled Christian term for salvation (उद्धार) that avoids the worst Hindu trap, unlike Punjabi; the remaining work is extending that same discipline to the Buddhist-coded alternative (निर्वाण), which is genuinely new ground for this pipeline.
• Nepal’s young, often underground-to-recently-legal church has a strong existing culture of covenant fellowship (सहभागिता) formed under real historical risk, giving this curriculum’s fellowship and community language unusual lived resonance rather than needing to be built from nothing.
• करार, the established Nepali term for “covenant,” is already distinct from and arguably clearer than comparable renderings in neighboring languages, needing no correction.

Recommended actions

• Route every Critical and High risk segment (30 of 40 doctrines) through human theologian review before publication; do not allow automated-only review to touch these terms.
• Brief theologian reviewers specifically on Buddhist rebirth and tulku-reincarnation doctrine alongside the more familiar Hindu risk categories, since automated glossary enforcement built only for a Hindu-majority context would miss this front entirely.
• Route all evangelism and proclamation content through human theologian review, not just native-speaker review, given the concrete legal stakes.