Semantic Analysis

Vernacular Language Packages in this pipeline typically describe terms as “narrower” or “broader” than their English source word. Sanskrit needs a third category: terms where the Sanskrit word is more precisely theorized than the English source, such that using it at all requires deliberate narrowing away from its established technical sense.

More-precisely-theorized-than-English terms (a category unique to Sanskrit in this pipeline)

• आत्मा (used only in the fixed compound पवित्र आत्मा, “Holy Spirit”): English “spirit” is comparatively loose; आत्मा is the single most precisely theorized term in classical philosophy, asserted in the Upanishadic mahavakyas to be ultimately identical with Brahman. This term cannot be used loosely elsewhere in translated material without risking reinforcement of that identity claim in the Holy Spirit’s specific case.
• धार्मिकता (righteousness): built directly on dharma, the first purushartha and Mimamsa’s central category; English “righteousness” carries nothing like this systematized weight.
• श्रद्धा (rejected for “faith”): precisely classified into three guna-based types in Bhagavad Gita 17; English “faith” has no comparable formal typology.

Narrower-than-English terms

• पवित्राः जनाः (saints): must be used for all believers corporately (Romans 1:7), never for the inspired ऋषि class (Vedic seers) or the formal संन्यासिन् renunciate life-stage, both of which name specific, restricted categories rather than every believer.
• आहूतः / आह्वानम् (called/calling): repurposed from Vedic sacrificial invocation vocabulary (a human ritually invoking a deity) to describe the reverse direction (God summoning a human) — translators must track this deliberate reversal rather than assume the term’s ordinary direction of address carries over.

Broader-than-English terms

• सामर्थ्यम् (power of God): deliberately preferred over शक्तिः, which in Shakta philosophical theology is not merely “powerful-sounding” but the hypostasized, personified divine feminine creative power of an entire Tantric theological literature; सामर्थ्यम्’s narrower, unpersonified range is an advantage here.
• विश्वासः (faith): covers both “belief” and “trust” without the technical guna-classification baggage of श्रद्धा, making it broader in useful range even though comparatively untheorized in classical philosophy.

Implication

Where a Sanskrit term’s technical precision exceeds its English source’s, the glossary’s notes field (see translation_memory.json) exists specifically to name the exact classical source of that precision, so a term is never applied as though it were a plain, untheorized word.