Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Galatians (English → Vietnamese)
Purpose
This analysis identifies where the Vietnamese language, as shaped by its established Protestant Bible tradition (Bản Dịch Truyền Thống, 1926) and by its surrounding Buddhist, Confucian, and ancestor-venerating cultural substrate, has adequate vocabulary, missing vocabulary, or crowded semantic neighborhoods for the fourteen doctrines assigned to this Galatians curriculum. It extends the baseline Romans Language Package without contradicting it, and it feeds directly into 08_core_glossary.md and the Phase 2 translation_memory.json v2 update.
Coverage spans all six chapters of Galatians. Every doctrine below is cross-referenced to its primary passages; the core passage (Galatians 2:15–21) anchors the analysis but is not its scope boundary.
Section A — Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each doctrine: the Vietnamese terms currently available (reused from baseline or newly proposed), their specific weaknesses in Vietnamese, and the recommended handling strategy.
| # | Doctrine | Available Vietnamese Terms | Weaknesses / Gaps | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Justification by Faith | sự xưng công bình (justification), sự công bình (righteousness), đức tin (faith), sự công bình được kể cho (imputed righteousness) — all reused Critical-tier baseline terms | Vietnamese has no single native forensic-legal term that separates “declared righteous” from “made righteous” or “morally improved” outside the compound phrase already coined in Romans. Buddhist-formed readers default to a gradual self-improvement model (tu tập) for any “righteousness” language. | Reuse baseline compounds exactly; in Galatians 2:16 (thesis statement, stated three times in one verse) enforce verbatim consistency across all three clauses. No new coinage needed — this is a consistency risk, not a vocabulary gap. |
| 2 | The True Gospel versus False Gospels | Tin Lành (gospel), Tin Lành khác (different gospel), lẽ thật của Tin Lành (truth of the gospel), đáng bị a-na-them / đáng bị Đức Chúa Trời rủa sả và dứt bỏ (anathema) | “Tin Lành” doubles as the common Vietnamese name for Protestantism itself, so “Tin Lành khác” risks reading as “a different Protestant group” rather than Paul’s claim that the rival message forfeits the name gospel entirely. Vietnamese has no native curse-pronouncement vocabulary carrying ἀνάθεμα’s judicial solemnity — ordinary disapproval terms (sai, không đồng ý) are far too weak. | Surround every “Tin Lành khác” occurrence with disambiguating context. For ἀνάθεμα, prefer the fuller phrase for first-generation readers; permit the established transliteration “a-na-them” (per 1 Corinthians 16:22 Vietnamese Bible precedent) for congregations already familiar with it. Human theologian review mandatory both occurrences (1:8–9). |
| 3 | Paul’s Apostleship | sứ đồ (apostle), sự tỏ ra / sự mặc khải (revelation), biệt riêng ra từ trong lòng mẹ (set apart from the womb), không phải từ loài người, cũng không phải bởi loài người | ”Sự mặc khải” risks phonetic/register proximity to vocabulary describing spirit-medium disclosure (đồng bóng) or fortune-telling (thầy bói) in Vietnamese folk religious registers if left unqualified. | Always anchor “sự mặc khải/tỏ ra” to Đức Chúa Trời or Đức Chúa Giê-xu as grammatical subject in the same clause; never let the revelation stand unattributed. No new coinage required. |
| 4 | Law and Grace | luật pháp (law), ân điển (grace), ở dưới luật pháp (under the law), làm cho ân điển ra vô ích (nullify grace), lìa khỏi/rơi khỏi ân điển (fall from grace), sự rủa sả (curse), chuộc/cứu chuộc (redeem) | This is the letter’s central antithesis and its single greatest gap-risk: Vietnamese hearers from Buddhist backgrounds may unconsciously map “earning standing through law-observance” onto công đức/phước đức (accumulated merit), collapsing the very contrast Paul is building. “Sự rủa sả” also risks assimilation to folk vận rủi/bị trù ẻo (impersonal or spirit-inflicted bad luck). | Reuse ân điển/luật pháp exactly; require explicit merit-contrast framing (per baseline AI instruction rule 5) at every Law-and-Grace passage, especially 2:16, 2:21, 3:10–13, 5:4. Teach sự rủa sả as a personal covenant God’s own judicial pronouncement, never an impersonal or ancestor/spirit-inflicted curse. |
| 5 | Crucified with Christ | tôi đã cùng bị đóng đinh vào thập tự giá với Đấng Christ, Đấng Christ sống trong tôi, đã phó chính mình Ngài vì tôi, đã đóng đinh xác thịt | Highest gap-risk in the letter: Vietnamese Buddhist-formed readers have a ready-made competing model — ascetic self-mortification and gradual detachment from desire (diệt dục) as the path to liberation — into which “crucifying the flesh/self” fits all too naturally as a self-performed technique. No existing Vietnamese Christian vocabulary automatically blocks this misreading. | Every occurrence (2:19–20; 5:24; 6:14) must be framed as a completed, Christ-accomplished event appropriated by faith, not an ongoing ascetic discipline the believer performs. Human theologian review required every occurrence, matching the baseline’s Critical-tier review pattern for resurrection/incarnation. |
| 6 | The Abrahamic Covenant and Promise | giao ước (covenant), lời hứa (promise), con cháu của Áp-ra-ham (sons of Abraham), dòng dõi (seed), người trung gian (mediator), người thừa kế (heir) | “Con cháu của Áp-ra-ham” and “dòng dõi” both carry the full cultural weight of Vietnamese lineage-consciousness (dòng họ, huyết thống) — a paradox risk in two directions: readers may either (a) rightly resonate with covenant-descent language, or (b) wrongly conclude Paul is devaluing biological lineage generally rather than redefining covenant membership specifically. Additionally, “dòng dõi” reads naturally as a collective plural in Vietnamese, obscuring Paul’s grammatically singular, Christ-focused argument at 3:16. | Retain established renderings; add a mandatory translator’s note at 3:16 preserving the singular-referent argument. Teach sons_of_abraham passages (3:7,29) with explicit clarification that the redefinition is scoped to covenant membership, not a general devaluation of family lineage. |
| 7 | The Law’s Purpose | ở dưới luật pháp, bị canh giữ/bị nhốt lại, thầy giáo / người giữ và dạy dỗ trẻ (παιδαγωγός), những lề thói/nguyên tắc sơ đẳng của thế gian (στοιχεῖα) | The traditional Vietnamese Bible term “thầy giáo” for παιδαγωγός foregrounds instruction, but the Greek term names a household slave’s custodial, disciplinary, and strictly temporary-until-maturity role — precisely the point of Paul’s argument that the law’s purpose was custodial and provisional. This is a genuine vocabulary gap: no single existing Vietnamese word carries the slave-guardian sense. στοιχεῖα also risks drifting toward “thần linh” (spirit-being) in interpretive expansion. | Retain “thầy giáo” only with a mandatory footnote explaining the guardian-slave background, OR adopt the fuller descriptive phrase “người giữ và dạy dỗ trẻ” throughout for clarity. For στοιχεῖα, keep the rendering strictly in the register of “elementary systems/principles,” never resolving toward a spirit-being term — this would collide directly with the baseline’s forbidden “thần linh” substitution for Holy Spirit. Human theologian review required for παιδαγωγός occurrences (3:24–25). |
| 8 | Adoption and Sonship | sự làm con nuôi (adoption), Con Đức Chúa Trời (Son of God), Cha (Father), Áp-ba (Abba), khi kỳ hạn đã được trọn (fullness of time), Đức Chúa Trời đã sai Con Ngài đến, sanh bởi một người nữ, sanh ra dưới luật pháp | Galatians 4 develops adoption at greater length than Romans 8, through the heir/minor/slave contrast — heightening (not just repeating) the baseline’s Confucian filial-duty (hiếu) collision risk, because the whole chapter’s argument turns on grace-based, not obligation-based, sonship. The addition “born under the law” is unique to this incarnation statement and must not be smoothed into a generic birth notice. | Reuse baseline terms exactly; apply the Adoption doctrine’s teaching note with greater emphasis than in Romans, given ch. 4’s sustained heir-argument. Preserve “sanh ra dưới luật pháp” as essential to Christ’s qualification to redeem those under the law (4:5). Human theologian review required for the full incarnation statement (4:4). |
| 9 | Freedom in Christ | sự tự do (freedom), ách tôi mọi/ách nô lệ (yoke of slavery), người nữ tôi mọi/người nữ tự do (slave woman/free woman) | Significant crowded-neighborhood risk: “sự tự do” in ordinary Vietnamese social discourse can connote freedom from hierarchical or filial (hiếu) obligation generally — a socially loaded claim quite different from Paul’s specific point. No missing-vocabulary problem; the risk is over-generalization of an otherwise adequate term. | Every occurrence (5:1,13) must specify freedom is freedom FOR righteous, Spirit-led, loving service, never license and never a general social liberation from family duty. Teaching notes should distinguish this from Confucian hierarchical-obligation critique. |
| 10 | Circumcision and the New Creation | phép cắt bì/sự cắt bì (circumcision), sự không chịu cắt bì (uncircumcision), chịu báp-têm vào trong Đấng Christ/mặc lấy Đấng Christ, sự dựng nên mới (new creation) | Circumcision itself carries low direct syncretism risk (no Vietnamese ritual analogue), but “sự dựng nên mới” carries the letter’s single sharpest crowded-neighborhood risk: any language of a decisive inner transformation risks being heard through the lens of luân hồi (rebirth/reincarnation cycle), the dominant Vietnamese Buddhist cosmological frame for personal transformation across successive existences. | Keep “sự dựng nên mới” exactly as coined; teach explicitly as a singular, once-for-all, God-accomplished transformation — never a repeatable renewal cycle. Apply the same Critical-tier review discipline the baseline uses for “resurrection” and “salvation.” Human theologian review required every occurrence (6:15). |
| 11 | Flesh versus Spirit | xác thịt (flesh), bước đi theo Thánh Linh (walk by the Spirit), các việc làm của xác thịt (works of the flesh), theo xác thịt/theo lời hứa | ”Xác thịt” already carries a neutral, purely physical sense elsewhere in Vietnamese Bible usage (e.g., lineage descent, 4:23), creating an internal Vietnamese ambiguity between the ethical/theological sense (sin-oriented disposition) and the merely descriptive sense (physical/bodily). Externally, the term risks assimilation to the Buddhist framework of the body as impermanent and a source of suffering to be transcended through detachment (buông bỏ). | Context must always disambiguate which sense is active; in ethical contexts (5:16–24; 6:8) reinforce that xác thịt names a morally culpable disposition requiring the Spirit’s decisive victory, not a physical substrate to be meditatively transcended. |
| 12 | Fruit of the Spirit | trái của Thánh Linh (singular “trái,” not plural), tình yêu thương, sự vui mừng, sự bình an, nhịn nhục, nhân từ, hiền lành/tốt lành, trung tín, mềm mại/nhu mì, tiết độ | Vietnamese naturally pluralizes lists (“những trái”) which would flatten Paul’s deliberate singular (“trái,” not “các trái”) conveying one organic, unified outgrowth of the Spirit rather than nine separately achieved virtues. πίστις in this list (trung tín) also risks conflation with saving faith (đức tin) if rendered identically. | Preserve the singular “trái của Thánh Linh” throughout; render the ninth item as “trung tín” (not “đức tin”) and flag for native speaker review to prevent conflation with the object-specific saving-faith term used everywhere else in the corpus. |
| 13 | Faith Working through Love | đức tin hay làm ra bởi sự yêu thương | No existing single Vietnamese idiom captures this precise relationship (love as faith’s active expression, not an added requirement). Risk of the translation being read as adding a second, separate condition alongside faith for right standing — which would reintroduce a merit-like requirement uncomfortably close to công đức. | Render exactly as coined; teaching material must explicitly state love is faith’s fruit/outworking, never a co-requirement for justification. |
| 14 | Bearing One Another’s Burdens | hãy mang gánh nặng cho nhau, lỗi/sự phạm lỗi, sửa lại…với tâm thần nhu mì, sẽ tự gánh lấy phần riêng của mình, những người trong nhà đức tin | Low direct syncretism risk; the primary risk is internal-textual, not cultural — readers may perceive 6:2 (“bear one another’s burdens”) and 6:5 (“each will carry his own load”) as contradictory unless the distinction between communal support and personal accountability is made explicit. | No new coinage needed. Ensure teaching materials contrast, rather than conflate, 6:2 and 6:5. |
Section B — Missing Vocabulary (No Existing Vietnamese Equivalent)
These concepts have no ready-made Vietnamese Bible-tradition term and require new coinage, compound phrasing, or a mandatory footnote — distinct from Section C’s crowded-neighborhood problem, where a term does exist but collides with a rival concept.
| Term/Concept | Gap Description | Proposed Solution |
|---|---|---|
| παιδαγωγός (guardian-tutor) | No single Vietnamese word carries the custodial-slave + disciplinary + strictly-temporary sense; “thầy giáo” (teacher) captures only the instructional overtone that is actually secondary in Paul’s argument. | Fuller descriptive phrase “người giữ và dạy dỗ trẻ” or footnoted “thầy giáo.” Mandatory human theologian review. |
| ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον (a different gospel that is no gospel) | Vietnamese has no idiom distinguishing “a rival message using the same name” from “a different denomination of the same faith." | "Tin Lành khác” plus mandatory disambiguating context at every occurrence (1:6–9). |
| ἀνάθεμα (solemn divine curse-pronouncement) | No native Vietnamese vocabulary for a formal, repeated, apostolic curse-pronouncement distinct from ordinary disapproval. | Transliteration “a-na-them” (established at 1 Cor. 16:22) or fuller phrase “đáng bị Đức Chúa Trời rủa sả và dứt bỏ.” |
| σπέρμα as grammatically singular, Christologically specific (3:16) | “Dòng dõi” reads as a natural collective/plural in Vietnamese, losing the singular-referent argument Paul is explicitly making. | Retain “dòng dõi” with mandatory translator’s note explaining the singular-Christ argument at 3:16. |
| δωρεάν, negative sense (“for nothing,” 2:21) vs. positive sense (“freely given,” elsewhere) | Vietnamese “vô ích” (in vain) and the positive gift-sense vocabulary used for grace do not share a root the way the single Greek word δωρεάν does, so the deliberate wordplay/connection Paul may be drawing is invisible in translation. | Accept the loss of the Greek wordplay (unavoidable); add translator’s note at 2:21 to prevent confusion between “Christ died in vain” (negative) and grace’s “given freely” (positive) sense elsewhere. |
| στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου (elemental things of the world) | No existing single Vietnamese term for this hybrid category (part cosmological, part cultic-observance system). | Descriptive phrase “những lề thói/nguyên tắc sơ đẳng của thế gian”; resolve interpretive ambiguity in theologian’s notes, never toward “thần linh.” |
| ἰουδαΐζω (to Judaize, 2:14) | No single-word Vietnamese equivalent exists for this technical verb. | Render descriptively: “buộc phải sống theo cách của người Do Thái.” |
| πίστις Χριστοῦ genitive ambiguity (2:16,20; 3:22) | Vietnamese “đức tin của Đấng Christ” is grammatically capable of either the objective (“faith in Christ”) or subjective (“Christ’s own faithfulness”) sense, but the established Vietnamese Protestant tradition has settled on the objective-genitive reading; there is no vocabulary gap, only an ambiguity-resolution decision (see Section E). | Default to objective genitive per tradition; log subjective-genitive alternative in segment cache. |
Section C — Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
These Vietnamese terms are adequate and already established, but sit close enough to a rival religious/cultural concept that every occurrence needs explicit “fencing” (contextual, doctrinal, or footnoted) to prevent doctrinal collapse.
| Vietnamese Term | Doctrine | Rival Neighbor Concept | Cultural Source | Fencing Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ân điển / các việc làm của luật pháp | Law and Grace; Justification by Faith | công đức / phước đức (accumulated merit through practice) | Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhism | Explicit merit-contrast framing at every grace-vs-law passage (2:16, 2:21, 3:1–14, 5:4); never allow “works of the law” to be read as a path to standing analogous to merit accumulation. |
| sự rủa sả (curse) | Law and Grace | vận rủi / bị trù ẻo (impersonal or spirit-inflicted bad luck) | Vietnamese folk religion / ancestor-spirit belief | Teach as a personal covenant God’s judicial pronouncement, never an impersonal or spirit-caused misfortune. |
| tôi đã cùng bị đóng đinh…với Đấng Christ / đã đóng đinh xác thịt | Crucified with Christ | diệt dục / tu khổ hạnh (ascetic self-mortification and detachment from desire) | Vietnamese Buddhist ascetic practice | Frame explicitly as a completed, Christ-accomplished status appropriated by faith, never an ongoing self-performed discipline. |
| sự dựng nên mới (new creation) | Circumcision and the New Creation | luân hồi (rebirth/reincarnation cycle) | Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist cosmology | Teach as singular, once-for-all, non-repeatable transformation; forbid any cyclical-renewal framing. |
| xác thịt (flesh, ethical sense) | Flesh versus Spirit | thân xác vô thường (the impermanent body to be transcended via detachment) | Vietnamese Buddhist anthropology | Distinguish moral-culpability sense from bodily/descriptive sense in context every time; never reduce to a detachment target. |
| sự tự do (freedom) | Freedom in Christ | thoát khỏi đạo hiếu / nghĩa vụ gia đình (escaping filial duty) | Confucian family-obligation framework | Scope explicitly to freedom FOR righteous Spirit-led service, not release from family duty generally. |
| con cháu của Áp-ra-ham / dòng dõi (sons/seed of Abraham) | Abrahamic Covenant and Promise | dòng họ / huyết thống (biological lineage and ancestral line) | Vietnamese lineage-consciousness / ancestor veneration | Clarify the redefinition is scoped to covenant membership, not a general devaluation of family lineage. |
| những lề thói/nguyên tắc sơ đẳng của thế gian (elemental things) | The Law’s Purpose | thần linh (folk spirit category) | Vietnamese folk religion | Keep register strictly at “elementary systems/principles”; never let interpretive expansion resolve toward a spirit-being term. |
| thầy giáo (guardian-tutor, if retained) | The Law’s Purpose | thầy giáo generic sense (ordinary academic teacher) | General Vietnamese usage | Mandatory footnote restoring the custodial-slave, disciplinary, temporary sense; or replace with fuller descriptive phrase. |
| đáng bị a-na-them (anathema) | True Gospel vs False Gospels | sai / không đồng ý (ordinary disagreement) | General Vietnamese register | Reinforce the solemn, twice-repeated, divine-curse weight; never let it read as mere doctrinal disagreement. |
| trung tín (faithfulness, fruit-list sense) | Fruit of the Spirit | đức tin (saving faith directed at Christ) | Internal Vietnamese theological vocabulary | Use “trung tín” exclusively for this fruit-list occurrence (5:22); never substitute “đức tin” here. |
Section D — Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Term | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| ἀνάθεμα (anathema) | Paraphrase preferred; transliteration permitted for established congregations — “đáng bị Đức Chúa Trời rủa sả và dứt bỏ” primary; “a-na-them” as an alternate for readers already familiar with the 1 Corinthians 16:22 precedent | A bare transliteration risks being read as an untranslated loanword with no felt weight for first-generation believers; the fuller phrase restores the judicial-curse sense. Human theologian review required regardless of choice. |
| Χριστός (Christ, as recurring proper name/title) | Established transliteration/proper-name form: Đấng Christ | Per baseline AI instruction standard; distinct from “Đấng Mê-si-a,” which is reserved for explicit OT-promise-fulfillment contexts (baseline term entry “messiah”). Galatians uses Χριστός overwhelmingly as Paul’s proper name/title for Jesus rather than as an explicit messianic argument, so “Đấng Christ” is the correct default. |
| σπέρμα (seed, Christological singular, 3:16) | Paraphrase with mandatory translator’s note — “dòng dõi” plus footnote | No transliteration is possible or helpful for a common noun; the grammatical-singular argument must be preserved through an explanatory note rather than through the word choice itself. |
| παιδαγωγός (guardian-tutor) | Paraphrase preferred over bare traditional term — “người giữ và dạy dỗ trẻ” or footnoted “thầy giáo” | Transliteration is not viable for a common noun; the traditional single-word rendering actively undersells the doctrinal point, so a fuller descriptive paraphrase is required over defaulting to tradition alone. |
| στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου (elemental things) | Paraphrase only; transliteration rejected | A transliterated loanword would sound like an obscure technical import and invite readers to fill the gap with a folk-spirit concept; a plain descriptive phrase keeps the register controlled. |
| Ἁγάρ / Σάρρα (Hagar / Sarah) | Established transliteration: A-ga / Sa-ra | Proper names; follow Vietnamese Bible-translation convention exactly as with Đa-vít, Áp-ra-ham. |
| Ἰσμαήλ / Ἰσαάκ (Ishmael / Isaac, implied) | Established transliteration: Ích-ma-ên / Y-sác | Supply per established form if referenced in supplementary teaching material, even though not named directly in the Galatians text itself. |
| δωρεάν (2:21, “in vain”) | Paraphrase, not transliteration — “vô ích” | Common adverb; no transliteration is applicable. Requires a translator’s note distinguishing this negative sense from the positive “freely given” sense used of grace elsewhere. |
| Ἰουδαϊσμός (Judaism) | Established compound: Do Thái giáo | Standard existing Vietnamese usage for the historical-religious system; low risk, biographical reference only (1:13–14). |
Section E — Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Galatians
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision strength with a rival Vietnamese concept × frequency in the letter). All Rank 1–5 items require human theologian review per baseline escalation rules; Rank 6–10 require native speaker review at minimum.
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Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι / crucified with Christ, world/flesh crucified (2:19–20; 5:24; 6:14) — Highest risk in the letter. Vietnamese Buddhist-formed readers have a ready-made, culturally reinforced competing model (ascetic self-mortification, diệt dục) into which this language fits too naturally as a self-performed technique rather than a completed, Christ-accomplished status appropriated by faith.
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ἔργα νόμου / works of the law, contrasted with ἄν điển (2:16, 21; 3:1–14; 5:4) — The letter’s central antithesis is exactly the doctrinal seam most exposed to unconscious collapse into công đức/phước đức (merit accumulation), a background assumption many Vietnamese readers bring to any “deeds vs. standing” discussion.
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καινὴ κτίσις / new creation (6:15) — Critical-tier risk of assimilation to luân hồi (reincarnation cycle); any language of decisive personal transformation risks being heard through Vietnam’s dominant cyclical-renewal cosmological frame unless explicitly fenced as singular and non-repeatable.
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ἀνάθεμα / anathema (1:8–9) — Vietnamese has no native equivalent for a formal, twice-repeated, apostolic curse-pronouncement; without careful handling this collapses into ordinary social disapproval, entirely losing Paul’s most severe rhetorical weapon in the letter.
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παιδαγωγός / guardian-tutor (3:24–25) — The traditional rendering “thầy giáo” actively undersells the argument’s point (the law’s custodial, disciplinary, and strictly temporary character); this is a genuine vocabulary gap, not merely an ambiguity, and it sits at the hinge of the entire Law’s Purpose doctrine.
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σπέρμα, grammatically singular Christological argument (3:16) — “Dòng dõi” naturally reads as collective/plural in Vietnamese, silently erasing Paul’s explicit grammatical argument that the promise refers to one specific descendant, Christ.
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ἐκπίπτω τῆς χάριτος / fall from grace (5:4) — Risk of being generalized beyond its precise scope (seeking justification via law/circumcision) into a claim that salvation can be lost through ordinary moral failure — which would directly contradict the baseline Romans “assurance_of_salvation” doctrine when the two books are studied together.
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στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου / elemental things of the world (4:3, 9) — Interpretive pull toward a spirit-being reading would collide directly with the baseline’s forbidden “thần linh” substitution rule for the Holy Spirit, creating a doctrinally dangerous adjacency if mishandled.
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πίστις Χριστοῦ genitive ambiguity (2:16, 20; 3:22) — Genuinely ambiguous in the Greek between “faith in Christ” (objective genitive) and “Christ’s faithfulness” (subjective genitive); Vietnamese phrasing does not resolve the ambiguity any more than English does, so a deliberate, tradition-anchored translation decision (objective genitive default) must be made and logged, not left implicit.
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ἐλευθερία / freedom (5:1, 13) — Socially loaded risk of being heard as freedom from Confucian filial-hierarchical obligation generally, rather than Paul’s specific freedom-for-loving-service claim; amplified because Vietnamese family structure gives this term unusual everyday weight.
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δωρεάν, negative vs. positive sense (2:21 vs. grace passages elsewhere) — Low-frequency but doctrinally sharp: conflating “Christ died in vain” with the positive “freely given” sense of grace elsewhere would produce theological nonsense if a reviewer is not alerted to the deliberate distinction.
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πίστις in the fruit-of-the-Spirit list (5:22) — Lower severity than the above but a real conflation risk: rendering this occurrence as “đức tin” (saving faith) rather than “trung tín” (faithfulness as character trait) would blur two theologically distinct senses of the same Greek word within eleven verses of each other.
Section F — Chapter Coverage Confirmation
- Chapter 1: Reviewed. Contributes Paul’s Apostleship and True Gospel vs. False Gospels vocabulary; highest-risk item ἀνάθεμα (Rank 4) originates here.
- Chapter 2: Reviewed. Contributes Justification by Faith (thesis statement, 2:16), Crucified with Christ (2:19–20, Rank 1), and circumcision/hypocrisy vocabulary; the core passage (2:15–21) receives the deepest treatment.
- Chapter 3: Reviewed. Contributes Abrahamic Covenant, Law and Grace, and Law’s Purpose vocabulary; site of Ranks 2, 5, 6, and 9.
- Chapter 4: Reviewed. Contributes Adoption and Sonship vocabulary and the Hagar/Sarah allegory; site of the unique “born under the law” incarnation clause and Rank 8 (στοιχεῖα).
- Chapter 5: Reviewed. Contributes Freedom in Christ, Flesh versus Spirit, Fruit of the Spirit, and Faith Working through Love vocabulary; site of Ranks 3 (partially, via 5:24), 7, 10, and 12.
- Chapter 6: Reviewed. Contributes Bearing One Another’s Burdens and Circumcision/New Creation vocabulary; site of Rank 3 (6:15) and the closing crucifixion-with-the-world restatement (Rank 1, 6:14).
No chapter was found to contribute zero load-bearing vocabulary; Galatians’ compressed argumentative style means every chapter carries doctrinally significant terms requiring gap analysis.
This document extends, and does not contradict, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json. All reused terms above carry their baseline risk tier and rendering unchanged. New terms proposed here await ingestion into translation_memory.json v2 per Phase 2 protocol.