Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Acts 1–28 (English → Vietnamese)
Purpose and Method
This document executes PRD Phase 1 Step 8 for the Acts curriculum. It does not re-derive term renderings already fixed by the baseline Romans package or already proposed in 08_core_glossary.md; instead it analyzes the structural gaps and collision zones in Vietnamese theological vocabulary that those renderings must operate inside of, across the whole book of Acts. Three questions drive the analysis:
- Where does Vietnamese lack any ready term for a concept in Acts (missing vocabulary), requiring paraphrase or coinage?
- Where does Vietnamese have too many competing terms clustered around one concept (crowded semantic neighborhoods), requiring explicit fencing so translators and reviewers do not drift toward a wrong neighbor?
- Where is the transliterate-vs-paraphrase choice itself doctrinally load-bearing, not merely stylistic?
Findings are organized as: (A) a doctrine vocabulary matrix for the nine curriculum doctrines, (B) missing vocabulary, (C) crowded neighborhoods needing fencing, (D) a transliteration/paraphrase decision log, and (E) a ranked list of the book’s highest-risk ambiguities. A full chapter ledger precedes these sections to satisfy the full-book coverage mandate.
Full-Book Chapter Coverage Ledger
Every chapter of Acts was reviewed for load-bearing vocabulary. Chapters contributing no new gap beyond what is already logged are marked “Reviewed — no new gap.”
| Ch. | Load-bearing content reviewed | Gap status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ascension, casting lots, calling/election, “to the end of the earth” | New gaps: ascension collision with shamanic-journey imagery; lots vs. divination — see C, D |
| 2 | Pentecost, filled with the Spirit, tongues of fire, speaking in other tongues, pour out, gift of the Spirit, last days, repentance, baptism, call on the name of the Lord, fellowship | Core passage — highest gap density; see A.1, E.1, E.6, E.8 |
| 3 | Holy and Righteous One, Author of Life, God’s Servant, times of refreshing, restoration of all things, repentance | New gap: abstract eschatological terms with no Vietnamese lexeme — see B |
| 4 | Grace, no other name, boldness, Sanhedrin | See E.6 (exclusivity vs. pluralism) |
| 5 | Lied to the Holy Spirit, signs and wonders, Sanhedrin | Reviewed — confirms Spirit-personhood gap already logged under A.1 |
| 6 | Deacon’s ministry, laying on of hands | Reviewed — no new gap beyond A.5/C.2 |
| 7 | Glory, Son of Man, stoning, Abrahamic covenant | Reviewed — no new gap |
| 8 | Sorcery, buying God’s gift with money | See E.3, C.2 |
| 9 | The Way, conversion/turn, chosen instrument | See E.2, E.7 |
| 10 | Common or unclean, God-fearer, God shows no partiality | Reviewed — feeds A.2 |
| 11 | Christian (name), the gift of the Holy Spirit, held all things in common (retrospective) | Reviewed — no new gap |
| 12 | Angel, intercession, persecution (Herod) | Reviewed — confirms fencing at C.1 |
| 13 | Justification apart from the law (13:38-39), seed of David, set apart for ministry, fasting, appointed to eternal life, Messiah/Christ distinction | See A.8, D, E.10 |
| 14 | Gods in human form, kingdom of God | Reviewed — no new gap |
| 15 | Circumcision, yoke of the law, things sacrificed to idols, blood, grace (15:11) | See A.8, E.7 |
| 16 | Roman citizen, spirit of divination, baptism (Lydia, jailer) | See E.3, E.5 |
| 17 | The unknown god, examining the Scriptures, Messiah (explicit fulfillment sense) | See D, E.10 |
| 18 | Synagogue, gospel, Christ title | Reviewed — no new gap |
| 19 | Speaking in tongues (Ephesus), John’s baptism vs. Christian baptism, sorcery/magic books burned | See E.5 |
| 20 | Elders, overseer, shepherd/flock, wolves, whole counsel of God, inheritance/sanctification | See C.4 |
| 21 | Nazirite vow, law | Reviewed — no new gap |
| 22 | Witness, “in the name of Jesus” | Reviewed — feeds A.6 |
| 23 | Resurrection (general resurrection debate), Sanhedrin | Reviewed — confirms Critical resurrection term stability across Christ-specific and general senses |
| 24 | Self-control, judgment to come, righteousness | Reviewed — no new gap |
| 25 | Appeal to Caesar | Reviewed — no new gap |
| 26 | Heavenly vision, turn from darkness to light, inheritance (kleros) | See E.2 |
| 27 | Providence, intercession (prayer), thanksgiving | Reviewed — no new gap |
| 28 | Viper, without hindrance, kingdom of God (closing inclusio) | See A.9 |
A. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the nine curriculum doctrines: available Vietnamese terms, weaknesses in those terms, and the recommended handling strategy for Phase 2.
A.1 The Holy Spirit and Pentecost
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available terms | Đức Thánh Linh; Lễ Ngũ Tuần; được đầy dẫy Đức Thánh Linh; nói các thứ tiếng khác; đổ … ra; sự ban tặng Đức Thánh Linh; hình lưỡi như lửa; nói dối cùng Đức Thánh Linh; những ngày sau rốt |
| Weaknesses | Vietnamese has a densely populated indigenous vocabulary for spirit-phenomena (đồng bóng, hầu đồng, bị nhập, gọi hồn) that describes a human medium’s agency being displaced by an entering spirit. “Được đầy dẫy” (filled) is structurally close enough in surface grammar to “bị … nhập” (to be entered/possessed) that an insufficiently glossed reading risks importing a possession-trance frame into Pentecost. Likewise “nói các thứ tiếng khác” risks a bare reading as ecstatic/unintelligible utterance akin to trance-speech at hầu đồng ceremonies, when the text (2:6-11) insists on real, intelligible foreign languages. |
| Recommended strategy | Never abbreviate the full phrases. Every Ch. 2 occurrence of “filled with the Spirit” and “other tongues” must carry a standing teaching note (not shown in the final text but attached to the segment) affirming (a) the believer’s own conscious agency is heightened, not displaced, and (b) the languages spoken were real, existing human languages understood by named national groups. This is the single highest-density gap zone in the whole book and anchors the core passage (Acts 2:1-41). |
A.2 The Gospel to Jews and Gentiles
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available terms | Tin Lành; dân ngoại; Đức Chúa Trời chẳng tây vị ai; kính sợ Đức Chúa Trời; chung hay không sạch; Thần Không Biết; các thần lấy hình người |
| Weaknesses | ”Dân ngoại” (outside people) carries a residual “outsider/uncivilized” connotation from pre-modern Sino-Vietnamese usage that can read as a permanent social-status label rather than the purely theological “non-Jewish” category Acts uses to describe people about to be fully included. “Thần Không Biết” (the unknown god) risks being read by an audience raised on Ông Trời/Ngọc Hoàng folk-supreme-heaven concepts as validating that their existing folk category already constitutes saving knowledge of God. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain dân ngoại (baseline term; no better alternative exists) but pair Gentile-inclusion passages (Ch. 10, 11, 15) with explicit note that the category is being dissolved in Christ, not reinforced. Use Thần Không Biết strictly as Paul used it — a rhetorical bridge toward, never a validation of, existing folk categories; require a theologian-reviewed note at every occurrence (17:23). |
A.3 Repentance and Baptism
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available terms | sự ăn năn; báp-têm; kêu cầu danh Chúa |
| Weaknesses | Ăn năn risks assimilation to sám hối, the Buddhist confessional practice of self-effort merit-restoration; báp-têm is an opaque phonetic loanword carrying no native semantic transparency, so first-generation readers may absorb the ritual act without absorbing its meaning unless it is consistently glossed. A further, Acts-specific gap: the text itself distinguishes John’s preparatory baptism from full Christian baptism (19:1-5), but Vietnamese has only the one transliterated noun báp-têm for both — the distinction must be carried entirely by modifying phrases, not by a second lexeme. |
| Recommended strategy | Retain sự ăn năn and báp-têm as fixed (do not paraphrase báp-têm into a semantically transparent native coinage; the established loanword is doctrinally safer than any native equivalent, which would likely borrow purification-ritual vocabulary from folk or Buddhist practice). Require the qualifying phrase “báp-têm của Giăng” versus “báp-têm trong danh Đức Chúa Giê-xu” wherever Acts 19:1-5 is in view. |
A.4 The Church as Community
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available terms | Hội Thánh; sự thông công; có mọi sự làm của chung; các trưởng lão; người coi sóc; Cơ Đốc nhân; nhà hội; người chăn/bầy; muông sói; sự phục vụ |
| Weaknesses | Two distinct weaknesses. (1) “Các trưởng lão” (elders) collides with the Confucian/village hội đồng kỳ mục (council of elders), whose authority rests on age and clan hierarchy rather than spiritual gifting — risk of importing an inherited-status model of leadership. (2) “Có mọi sự làm của chung” (2:44-45; 4:32-35) — a gap not present in the Romans baseline at all — risks a modern political misreading in Vietnam specifically: readers whose families experienced 20th-century agricultural collectivization (hợp tác xã) may hear an echo of state-mandated communal property rather than the text’s voluntary, grace-motivated generosity. |
| Recommended strategy | For elders, pair every occurrence with a note that the office is grounded in spiritual gift and apostolic appointment (14:23), not clan seniority. For “held all things in common,” add a mandatory teaching note distinguishing voluntary grace-generosity from any state-collectivization association — this is a genuinely new, Vietnam-specific collision not anticipated by the baseline Romans package and should be escalated as a new Medium-High risk entry (see Section E.4). |
A.5 Apostolic Authority and Miracles
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available terms | sứ đồ; dấu lạ và phép lạ; tà thuật; tà linh bói toán; quyền năng của Đức Chúa Trời; sự đặt tay; thiên sứ; trong danh Đức Chúa Giê-xu; rút thăm/bắt thăm |
| Weaknesses | This doctrine sits directly on top of the single most crowded semantic neighborhood in the language: occult/spiritual-power vocabulary (tà thuật, bùa chú, đồng bóng, thầy pháp, gọi hồn, xin xăm, cầu cơ) is extensive, culturally live, and only a few words away from the vocabulary needed to describe genuine apostolic miracles. |
| Recommended strategy | Apply strict lexical fencing (see Section C.2): true miracle vocabulary (dấu lạ và phép lạ, quyền năng của Đức Chúa Trời) and counterfeit vocabulary (tà thuật, tà linh bói toán) must never share a root or be used interchangeably even in loose paraphrase. Every laying-on-of-hands and every exorcism/deliverance passage (8, 13, 16, 19) requires this fence to be explicit in the accompanying teaching note. |
A.6 Persecution and Bold Witness
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available terms | chứng nhân; sự dạn dĩ; Tòa Công Luận; ném đá |
| Weaknesses | Greek martys covers both “legal eyewitness testifier” and, beginning with Stephen (Ch. 7), the seed of the later technical sense “martyr.” Vietnamese has no single word bridging both senses the way English “witness/martyr” loosely does; the existing word for martyr in Vietnamese Christian usage, tử đạo, is Catholic-coded and not yet present in the Protestant-tradition baseline or in this glossary. |
| Recommended strategy | Keep chứng nhân uniformly for martys throughout Acts (matching the baseline’s witness entry); do not introduce tử đạo into Phase 2 output unless a future curriculum module on post-apostolic martyrdom requires it, in which case it should be added to translation memory with a theologian review flag rather than silently substituted for chứng nhân in Ch. 7. |
A.7 Conversion of Paul
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available terms | sự hiện thấy từ trời; trở lại/quay về; khí cụ được chọn; trở lại từ sự tối tăm qua sự sáng láng |
| Weaknesses | ”Trở lại” is used colloquially in modern Vietnamese for switching religious affiliation as an institutional/social act (đổi đạo, “changing religion” on a household registration form) — a much thinner concept than the Spirit-wrought, whole-person reorientation Acts 9 and 26 describe. “Sự hiện thấy từ trời” (heavenly vision) sits near vocabulary used for ancestor/spirit-contact visions in folk narrative. |
| Recommended strategy | Do not rely on trở lại alone to carry the full doctrinal weight; expository material accompanying translated segments should supplement with “được biến đổi” (transformed) language contextually. Heavenly-vision passages (9:3-9; 22:6-11; 26:12-18) require a note that the vision’s legitimacy rests on Christ’s own self-revelation confirmed by radical life-change and apostolic commissioning, not on any ritual-mediumship framework. |
A.8 Justification apart from the Law
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available terms | sự xưng công bình; luật pháp; phép cắt bì; gánh nặng; của cúng hình tượng; huyết; được định cho sự sống đời đời |
| Weaknesses | Two separate weaknesses. (1) luật pháp sits near enough to Confucian/Buddhist đạo lý (moral order) and dharma-adjacent concepts that “cannot justify” (13:38-39) needs to be unmistakably about a specific historical law code, not cosmic moral order generally. (2) “Của cúng hình tượng” (things sacrificed to idols) and “huyết” (blood) are this book’s single highest points of living cultural friction: Vietnamese ancestor veneration regularly involves food offerings (cúng), and Vietnamese cuisine regularly includes blood-based dishes (huyết, tiết canh) eaten in ordinary, non-idolatrous settings. |
| Recommended strategy | For 13:38-39, keep sự xưng công bình identical to the Romans rendering, with a fenced note that luật pháp names the Mosaic code specifically. For Ch. 15’s Jerusalem Council decree, mandatory pastoral teaching notes (not silent translation) are required at both của cúng hình tượng and huyết distinguishing the first-century idol-market/pagan-temple food situation from ordinary Vietnamese ancestor-food and blood-dish practice, so converts are not wrongly taught either that all such food is forbidden or that the decree has nothing to say to their context. |
A.9 The Great Commission Fulfilled
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Available terms | cho đến cùng đất; không ai ngăn cấm; Nước Đức Chúa Trời; công cuộc truyền giáo |
| Weaknesses | ”Công cuộc truyền giáo” carries institutional/colonial-missionary-agency overtones already flagged as a sensitivity in the Romans baseline; in Acts, this doctrine is structural rather than a single passage — it is the literary inclusio bracketing the entire book (1:8 opening / 28:31 closing) — so any inconsistency in rendering across 28 chapters breaks a deliberate authorial frame in a way a single-chapter inconsistency would not. |
| Recommended strategy | Treat the 1:8 / 28:31 pairing as a fixed-consistency rule equivalent to the baseline’s Romans 1:16-17 and 8:28 rules: lock the rendering of “to the end of the earth” and “without hindrance” identically at both bookends, and audit every intervening missionary-journey chapter (13-28) for silent drift in “công cuộc truyền giáo.” |
B. Missing Vocabulary (Genuine Lexical Gaps)
These concepts have no ready single Vietnamese term and must proceed by paraphrase/compound rather than a settled established word, unlike most of Section A’s terms which merely need fencing.
| Concept | Passage | Gap | Handling |
|---|---|---|---|
| Times of refreshing (ἀνάψυξις) | 3:20 | No Vietnamese lexeme for this specific eschatological-relief nuance; existing rest-words (nghỉ ngơi, an nghỉ) are generic | Retain the compound paraphrase “kỳ yên nghỉ” already proposed in the glossary; add note framing it as future/eschatological, not present-tense stress relief |
| Restoration of all things (ἀποκατάστασις πάντων) | 3:21 | No native single-word equivalent for a one-time cosmic restoration event distinct from cyclical renewal | Retain “sự phục hồi mọi sự”; explicit non-cyclical framing required given Buddhist cosmological background |
| Martyr (technical sense) | 7 (seed sense only) | No Protestant-tradition-established Vietnamese word yet in translation memory (tử đạo is Catholic-coded) | Do not coin; retain chứng nhân; escalate to theologian review only if a future module needs the technical term |
| God-fearer (bridge category) | 10:2,22 | No single Vietnamese word for a devout, Scripture-sympathetic non-covenant Gentile | Retain descriptive paraphrase “kính sợ Đức Chúa Trời”; requires background teaching, not a search for a missing noun |
| Neutral technical term distinguishing real vs. counterfeit ecstatic speech | 2, 19 (contrast implied) | Vietnamese has no ready-made neutral descriptor separating “unintelligible ecstatic utterance” from “real foreign language miraculously spoken” the way the Greek narrative context does | Must be carried entirely by narrative-context paraphrase (“nói được các ngôn ngữ thật mà người nghe hiểu được”) rather than by finding a missing single word |
| Legitimating vocabulary for a true revelatory vision vs. folk trance-vision | 9, 22, 26 | No neutral Vietnamese term marks “vision from the risen Christ” as categorically different from “vision during ancestor/spirit contact” without a full clause | Paraphrase with explicit clause (“sự hiện thấy từ trời do chính Đấng Christ sống lại hiện ra”), not a single substituted noun |
C. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
Where Vietnamese has multiple existing, culturally live terms clustered around one concept, translators risk drifting toward the wrong neighbor even while technically “translating correctly” at the sentence level. Each cluster below requires an explicit fence: a rule stating which neighboring terms are absolutely forbidden for the doctrinal term in question.
C.1 Spirit / spirit-being cluster
Đức Thánh Linh — thần linh — tà linh — linh hồn (soul) — vong (departed spirit) — thánh (deified hero, bare form) — thần (local deity) Fence: Đức Thánh Linh is reserved exclusively for the third Person of the Trinity and must never be shortened to bare thần linh; tà linh is reserved exclusively for evil/deceptive spirits (16:16); linh hồn/vong belong to a completely separate anthropological/ancestral domain and must never appear in Holy Spirit contexts even as loose stylistic variation.
C.2 Occult-power / miracle-power cluster
dấu lạ và phép lạ — quyền năng của Đức Chúa Trời — tà thuật — tà linh bói toán — bùa chú — đồng bóng — thầy pháp — cầu cơ Fence: Genuine apostolic power terms and counterfeit/occult terms must never share a modifier or be presented as two examples of the same underlying “spiritual technology.” Every Ch. 8, 13, 16, 19 passage juxtaposing the two must retain the contrast explicitly, per the baseline’s sorcery entry.
C.3 Path / religion cluster
Đạo (bare) — Đạo Phật — Đạo Khổng — Đạo Cao Đài — đạo ông bà — tôn giáo — tín ngưỡng — con đường Fence: “The Way” (ἡ ὁδός) must never appear as bare Đạo; always qualify (“Đạo của Chúa” or an equivalent phrase) to prevent a pluralist reading that treats Christianity as one đạo among the culturally normal plurality of đạo in Vietnam.
C.4 Leadership/eldership cluster
các trưởng lão — người coi sóc — kỳ mục (village elder council) — tộc trưởng (clan head) — người chăn (shepherd) Fence: Church eldership/overseer terms must be taught as grounded in spiritual gift and apostolic appointment (14:23; 20:28), never presented as functionally equivalent to a clan or village elder-council role based on age/lineage hierarchy.
C.5 Repentance / purification cluster
sự ăn năn — sám hối — tẩy uế (ritual cleansing) — thanh lọc (purification) Fence: Sự ăn năn is reserved for Spirit-enabled, grace-receiving turning to a personal God; never substitute sám hối’s self-effort merit-clearing framework, nor any ritual-cleansing term, even in paraphrase or homiletic elaboration.
C.6 Fate / calling cluster
được kêu gọi — sự lựa chọn — số phận — số mệnh — định mệnh — nghiệp — duyên (providential “fated” connection) Fence: Calling and election vocabulary must never be glossed with duyên or nghiệp, both extremely common in everyday Vietnamese speech for “fated” relationships and life outcomes; God’s summons in Acts (2:39; 9:15; 13:48) is personal and sovereign, not impersonal fate.
C.7 Offering / food cluster
của cúng hình tượng — cúng ông bà (ancestor offerings) — lễ vật (general offering) — dâng hiến (Christian giving/dedication) Fence: “Things sacrificed to idols” must be kept distinct from the general Vietnamese verb cúng (to make an offering, used broadly including for ancestors) so the Jerusalem Council’s decree is not read as a blanket prohibition on all food associated with any ritual, nor dismissed as irrelevant to ancestor-food practice without comment.
D. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decision Log
| Term | Decision | Alternative considered | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| báp-têm (baptism) | Transliteration (retain) | phép rửa (paraphrase, “washing rite”) | Phép rửa is Catholic-coded and risks assimilation to generic ritual washing/purification; the established Protestant loanword, though semantically opaque, is doctrinally safer and already fixed by tradition |
| Lễ Ngũ Tuần (Pentecost) | Paraphrase using existing OT feast name | Phonetic loan “Pen-tê-cốt” | Anchoring to the existing Vietnamese name for the Feast of Weeks preserves the OT-fulfillment argument (Joel citation, harvest typology) that a bare phonetic loan would erase |
| Đấng Mê-si-a / Đấng Christ | Dual transliteration, context-governed (per baseline) | Collapsing both to one term | Acts uses both the OT-fulfillment argument sense and the ordinary running-title sense; collapsing would blur the Messianic Promise doctrine’s argumentative structure (see Section E.10) |
| Sê-sa (Caesar) | Transliteration | N/A | Standard historical proper name; no doctrinal content |
| Cơ Đốc nhân (Christian) | Established compound, not phonetic loan | ”Cri-xi-an” (phonetic loan) | The compound is already the settled modern Vietnamese term and ties naturally to Đấng Christ |
| Tòa Công Luận (Sanhedrin) | Descriptive paraphrase | ”Xan-hê-đrin” (phonetic loan) | A functional-institutional description is more transparent to readers than an opaque transliteration of an unfamiliar Hebrew/Greek institutional name |
| thiên sứ (angel) | Native compound, not transliteration | ”an-giơn” (phonetic loan) | Existing native compound already carries the correct “heavenly messenger” sense without needing a loanword; avoids inventing new vocabulary unnecessarily |
| tà linh bói toán (spirit of divination) | Paraphrase | Transliterating “Python spirit” (πύθων) | A transliteration of the Greek term Pythōn would be theologically opaque to Vietnamese readers and would forfeit the needed direct link to living divination practice (thầy bói) that the paraphrase deliberately makes |
| Na-xi-rê (Nazirite) | Transliteration (proper-name adjective) | Paraphrase (“người có lời thề kiêng cữ”) | Retained as a proper-name-style adjective consistent with other biblical proper nouns; paraphrase alone would obscure the specific OT vow category |
| Đạo (của Chúa) (“the Way”) | Qualified paraphrase, never bare transliteration or bare native word | Bare “Đạo” | See Section C.3 fence; bare rendering would read as one religion among several |
E. Ranked Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined weight of doctrinal centrality, syncretism/collision severity, and frequency across the book.
- Filled with the Holy Spirit / speaking in other tongues (Ch. 2, core passage; recurs 4,6,9,10,13,19). Highest risk: Critical-tier doctrine, highest frequency, direct structural resemblance to living Vietnamese mediumship (đồng bóng, hầu đồng) practice. Every occurrence requires theologian review.
- “The Way” (Ch. 9,19,22,24). Critical: bare “Đạo” collapses Christianity into Vietnam’s normal religious pluralism (tam giáo đồng nguyên assumptions), directly undermining exclusivity claims elsewhere in the book.
- Sorcery / spirit of divination vs. signs and wonders fencing (Ch. 8,13,16,19). Critical: direct, repeated collision with live occult practice (bùa chú, gọi hồn, thầy bói); miscarried fencing would present miracle and magic as equivalent “spiritual technologies.”
- “Held all things in common” (Ch. 2,4,11). Newly identified Medium-High risk specific to Vietnam: potential collision with 20th-century agricultural-collectivization memory (hợp tác xã), a collision the Romans baseline had no occasion to flag and which Acts introduces for the first time in this curriculum.
- Baptism: John’s baptism vs. Christian baptism, and báp-têm vs. folk ritual washing (Ch. 2,16,19). High: opaque loanword plus a within-book distinction (19:1-5) that must be carried entirely by modifying phrases.
- “No other name” salvation exclusivity (Ch. 4) against Vietnamese religious pluralism. Critical: default cultural assumption that multiple religious paths (Đạo Phật, Đạo Khổng, đạo ông bà) are equally valid directly opposes the text’s absolute claim.
- Things sacrificed to idols / blood dietary rule (Ch. 15). High: direct, ongoing collision with living ancestor food-offering practice (cúng) and common blood-based cuisine (huyết, tiết canh); requires pastoral teaching notes, not silent translation, given the real risk of alienating converts from family observance without cause, or conversely normalizing idol-linked practice without cause.
- Repentance (ăn năn) vs. sám hối (Ch. 2,3,8,11,13,17,19,20,26). High: very frequent term sitting immediately next to a Buddhist self-effort merit-clearing concept; every occurrence carries this risk.
- Casting lots (Ch. 1) vs. divinatory practice (xin xăm, bói toán). Medium: lower doctrinal centrality than items above but same neighborhood as C.2/C.6; risk is drift toward reading apostolic office-discernment as ordinary fortune-seeking.
- Messiah (Đấng Mê-si-a) vs. Christ-title (Đấng Christ) dual rendering consistency (Ch. 2,3,13,17,18,26,28). High: Acts is the first curriculum in this pipeline to require the dual-rendering rule at scale (Romans uses “Đấng Christ” almost exclusively); inconsistent application across 28 chapters and multiple Phase 2 workers is a realistic failure mode requiring explicit QA.
Handoff Notes for Downstream Phase 1 Steps
- Sections A and C should be used directly by Step 9 (doctrine risk registry construction) to justify risk-tier assignments for new Acts terms, particularly the newly identified “held all things in common” collectivization risk (Section E.4), which is not present in the Romans baseline and should be considered for a risk-tier upgrade from Medium to High in the doctrine risk registry.
- Section D’s transliteration decisions should be locked into translation memory alongside the Section B paraphrase decisions before any Phase 2 segment processing begins.
- Section E’s ranked list should govern QA sampling priority in Phase 2 Step 17: items 1–3 and 6 warrant 100% theologian review; items 4–5, 7–8 warrant elevated native-speaker review sampling; items 9–10 warrant standard native-speaker review with consistency-check tooling.