Linguistic Gap Analysis

Some Romans concepts have no single-word Nepali equivalent, and some require extra explanatory weight because Nepali’s existing vocabulary is shared across two distinct religious frameworks.

Terms requiring compound phrases

• Justification (धर्मी ठहराइने कार्य — “the act of being declared righteous”): no single Nepali word captures the forensic, legal-declaration sense; never abbreviate to माफी (forgiveness) alone.
• Imputed righteousness (आरोपित धार्मिकता — “credited righteousness”): distinguishes righteousness credited to a believer from righteousness earned (आर्जित धार्मिकता, explicitly rejected). Because Nepali theological literature is comparatively young, this distinction has to be taught more explicitly than in languages with centuries of existing doctrinal writing to draw on.
• Obedience of faith (विश्वासको आज्ञाकारिता): must resist collapsing into generic religious duty.

Terms requiring extra disambiguation because they are shared across two religious systems

• Salvation-adjacent vocabulary: उद्धार, मुक्ति, मोक्ष, and निर्वाण are all live, current words in Nepali religious discourse, drawn from Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist usage respectively. Unlike a single-tradition language, choosing उद्धार here is not enough on its own — a Buddhist-heritage reader encountering उद्धार for the first time needs it distinguished from निर्वाण specifically, not just from मुक्ति/मोक्ष.
• पुण्य (merit): shared vocabulary across Hindu and Buddhist ethical systems; rejecting it for “grace” has to address both frameworks’ merit-accumulation logic, not just one.

Terms requiring transliteration rather than translation

• Messiah / Christ (मसीह): transliterated rather than translated, since no Nepali word carries the specific Jewish messianic-fulfillment sense.
• Abba (अब्बा): the Aramaic term of intimacy in Romans 8:15 is kept as a transliteration; unlike Bengali, this is not already part of everyday Nepali vocabulary from any major religious community, so it needs a full explanatory note.

Gap-filling strategy

Where a genuine gap exists, this Language Package prefers an established compound already in Nepali Christian usage over inventing a new coinage. Because Nepali’s religious vocabulary is shared across Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian usage more thoroughly than most other languages in this pipeline, this Language Package treats disambiguation notes as load-bearing rather than optional polish.