Executive Summary — Acts Language Package (Somali)

Why it matters

Acts is the narrative hinge between the Gospels and the epistles, and translating it into Somali carries higher collision risk than Romans did. Where Romans argues doctrine abstractly, Acts enacts it through concrete cultural flashpoints — spirit-filling, food purity, circumcision, martyrdom, sorcery, clan-elder authority — each of which sits directly adjacent to an established Somali Islamic or clan-cultural category with a different mechanism or payload. Get the fencing wrong here and the curriculum doesn’t just blur a doctrine; it can actively mislead readers into hearing Pentecost as jinn-possession, Gentile inclusion as a dietary-law footnote, or Stephen’s death as a jihad-linked shahiid narrative. Get it right, and Acts offers unusually strong teaching bridges (tawba, sunnah, qaraan mutual aid, pastoral imagery) that Romans’ more abstract argument could not.

Key findings

• 56 Critical + High risk terms now require mandatory human theologian enforcement in Phase 2 (21 Critical, 35 High), up from the Romans baseline’s smaller set — nearly doubling the fencing burden because Acts’ narrative genre multiplies concrete collision points.
• 34 of 43 tiered doctrines (79%) require human theologian review; a further 7 require native speaker review and only 2 are automated-review-only (risk_summary in doctrine_risk_registry.json: Critical 14, High 20, Medium 7, Low 2).
• The single highest-risk item in the book is Acts 10’s “common/unclean” vision — a near-certain misread as a xalaal/xaraan dietary debate unless the food-to-person extension (10:28) is made explicit in every rendering.
• Martyrdom and stoning (Stephen, ch. 7; James, ch. 12) sit closest to live physical danger: the available Somali loanword shahiid imports jihad/guaranteed-reward theology, and stoning (rajm) remains an invoked penalty by some armed actors in Somalia today — both require dual accuracy-plus-safety review, mirroring the baseline’s evangelism protocol.
• Acts intensifies, rather than introduces, the Romans baseline’s core Christological risks: Acts 2:36 (“made him Lord and Christ”) and 7:56 (“Son of Man”) are new acute pressure points requiring mandatory translator notes on top of the inherited Critical tier on deity/sonship/resurrection.

Risks

• Crowded semantic neighborhoods, not missing vocabulary, are the dominant risk. Somali has fluent, ready terms for nearly every Acts concept (toobad, xalaal/xaraan, shahiid, waayeel, barako, sixir, siyaam) — the risk is that each one is already claimed by an incompatible Islamic or clan framework and must be actively fenced at first use, not assumed self-evident from context.
• Repentance/baptism (Toobadkeenid/Baabtiis) recur in nearly every gospel-summary speech (2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 11:18; 17:30; 26:20); the earn-vs-receive distinction from Islamic tawba must be reinforced repeatedly across lessons, not taught once.
• Household salvation (16:31-34) and circumcision-as-salvation-requirement (ch. 15) both carry acute scope-of-claim risk: Somali readers could misread the first as automatic clan/family salvation and the second as a condemnation of a near-universal, religiously significant male practice — neither of which is Luke’s point.
• Physical safety, not only translation accuracy, is now a documented dimension of two doctrines (martyrdom, stoning) beyond the baseline’s evangelism doctrine — teaching material derived from these chapters cannot be approved on linguistic quality alone.

Opportunities

• Markhaati (witness) is a genuine, collision-free win: a neutral legal/eyewitness term that entirely avoids the Islamic creedal shahaado register while carrying real force across 15+ occurrences.
• Qaraan/diya mutual-aid custom, pastoral/shepherd imagery, fasting, and shared anti-idolatry conviction are authentic cultural bridges Acts can draw on more directly than Romans could, provided each is explicitly fenced from its native referent’s different mechanism (voluntary vs. obligatory; commissioning sign vs. potency transfer; common ground vs. resolving the deity-of-Christ collision).
• Acts’ extended chosen-instrument and conversion narrative (chs. 9, 22, 26) gives the “Conversion of Paul” and “Justification apart from the Law” doctrines a strong, repeatable personal-testimony anchor that previews the Romans argument almost verbatim (13:38-39) — reinforcing cross-curriculum consistency for learners moving between the two Language Packages.

Recommended actions

1. Adopt assets/translation_memory.json and assets/bible_term_registry.json (Acts extensions) as-is for Phase 2, with zero deviation on the 21 Critical and 35 High risk terms.
2. Route all 34 theologian-tier doctrines through mandatory human review before any segment touching them is marked approved, per the escalation rules fixed in analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
3. Apply dual accuracy-plus-pastoral-safety review to every martyrdom and stoning passage (7:54-60; 12:1-2; 14:19; 22:20), using the same protocol already established for evangelism content in the Romans baseline.
4. Enforce the book-title exception (Falimaha Rasuulada for citations only) precisely as scoped, so it never leaks into “apostle” being rendered Rasuul in doctrinal running text.
5. Prioritize theologian sign-off on Acts 2:36 and 7:56 specifically — these are the two narrowest but highest-density new Christological pressure points and cannot be cleared by glossary automation alone.