Executive Summary: Acts 1–28 Language Package (English → Pashto)

Why it matters

Acts is the narrative engine that puts every Critical doctrine already flagged in the Romans baseline into live, public, high-stakes action — Pentecost, apostolic preaching, Gentile inclusion, persecution, and Paul’s own conversion — for a Pashto-speaking house-church readership that is overwhelmingly Muslim-background and, in many regions, actively persecuted. Where Romans argues doctrine, Acts narrates it happening to named people in named cities, which raises both the teaching payoff and the collision risk: nearly every chapter stages a direct confrontation between the text’s claims and either mainstream Sunni theology (tawhid, the Quran’s crucifixion-denial, shahīd-martyrdom) or Pashtunwali’s parallel cultural code (jirga elder authority, badal revenge logic, tribal lineage-based status).

Key findings

• Full-book coverage complete. All 28 chapters of Acts have been analyzed (Steps 1, 2, 4, 8 outputs); Acts 2:1-41 (Pentecost) received full verse-by-verse treatment as the theological anchor, with every other chapter reviewed at load-bearing-term granularity. No chapter was silently omitted; chapters 18 and 25 are explicitly recorded as introducing no new load-bearing doctrine.
• 34 doctrines catalogued, extending the Romans registry without contradiction: 14 Critical, 13 High, 5 Medium, 2 Low.
• 85 glossary terms now under enforcement in assets/translation_memory.json: 42 terms inherited exactly from the Romans baseline (reused verbatim, per the hard rule against re-deriving established renderings), and 43 new terms introduced by Acts’ distinct genre — conversion narrative, miracle account, courtroom defense, and missionary travel.
• 48 terms (19 Critical + 29 High) require mandatory human theologian review at every occurrence under Phase 2 escalation rules — a materially larger reviewer burden than Romans alone, driven by Acts’ narrative multiplication of resurrection, lordship, and messianic-promise language across nearly every apostolic sermon.
• 27 of the 34 doctrines route to human theologian review; 5 to native speaker review; 2 to automated review only — matching assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json exactly.

Risks

• شاهد/شهید collision (Critical, highest-priority risk in the whole package). “Witness” (شاهد) shares its root with شهید (shahīd), the loaded jihad-martyrdom term; this collision sits at Acts’ own programmatic thesis verse (1:8) and recurs through every major sermon, then peaks at Stephen’s death (ch. 7), where confusion would be most damaging.
• باپتیزم/تعمید vs. Islamic ritual purification (Critical, dual doctrinal + physical-safety risk). No Romans-baseline precedent exists; public baptism is both a doctrinal collision point (repeatable purification vs. one-time identification with Christ) and a genuine life-threatening exposure risk for converts in restrictive regions.
• پاک/ناپاک vs. halal/haram/najis (Critical). Acts 10’s abolition of Mosaic ceremonial purity law is the passage most vulnerable in the entire book to being misheard as commentary on contemporary Islamic dietary law, which would derail the Gentile-inclusion narrative entirely.
• لار (the Way) vs. طریقه (Sufi tariqa); کرامات as an attractive-but-forbidden rendering for apostolic signs. Both are high-probability accidental-substitution risks precisely because the forbidden alternative is the more natural-sounding native option a translator might reach for under time pressure.
• Security-sensitive doctrines compound across the book. Mission to the Nations, Evangelism, Persecution and Bold Witness, Conversion of Paul, and the Great Commission’s “unhindered” close (28:31) all carry the same acute, potentially life-threatening safety dimension already Critical in the Romans baseline — but Acts multiplies their occurrences across nearly every chapter rather than confining them to isolated passages.

Opportunities

• Genuine cultural bridges, not just risks. Stephen’s dying forgiveness (7:60) positively engages Pashtunwali’s badal revenge code, parallel to the Romans baseline’s nanawatai bridge; regional dream-vision legitimacy (ru’ya/kashf) offers a real apologetic bridge for Paul’s Damascus-road vision; household-based conversion (Acts 16) resonates with kinship-oriented Pashtun social structure; and Acts 5:3-4’s “lying to the Holy Spirit” is a strong textual resource for teaching the Spirit’s personhood against the Jibril-identification default.
• Acts as the Romans doctrines’ proof in action. Justification apart from the Law (13:38-39; 15:11) and the Lordship/Messiah confession (2:36) give teachers narrative, story-driven reinforcement of doctrines Romans states propositionally — valuable for the lower-literacy, oral-culture-oriented segments of this audience.

Recommended actions

1. Load assets/translation_memory.json (Acts) alongside the Romans baseline for every Phase 2 segment; never treat the two as interchangeable — Romans terms remain authoritative where overlap exists.
2. Route all 48 Critical/High terms and 27 Critical/High doctrines to mandatory human theologian review before any Acts content ships, per analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md’s escalation rules.
3. Apply the شاهد/شهید, تعمید/وضو, and پاک/ناپاک fences at every single occurrence, not spot-checked samples, given their book-wide frequency and severity.
4. Pair every mission/evangelism/persecution passage with explicit pastoral safety framing, consistent with the Romans baseline’s existing security-sensitivity convention, rather than introducing a separate standard for Acts.
5. Carry this full artifact set (translation memory, term registry, doctrine registry, AI requirements) into Phase 2 as a matched set; do not process Acts segments against the Romans files alone.