Linguistic Gap Analysis
06 Linguistic Gap Analysis — Titus (English → Vietnamese)
Purpose and Method
This analysis surveys the entire book of Titus (1:1–3:15), with the core passage (2:11–3:8) as theological anchor, to identify where existing Vietnamese Christian vocabulary is (a) sufficient and reusable from the Romans baseline, (b) absent and requiring new coinage or compound construction, or (c) present but semantically “crowded” by a competing Buddhist, Confucian, or folk-religious concept that could distort doctrine if not fenced with translator notes. It also resolves transliteration-vs-paraphrase decisions for proper names and technical terms unique to Titus, and ranks the letter’s highest-risk ambiguities for Phase 2 review routing.
This document precedes and grounds 07_semantic_analysis.md and 08_core_glossary.md; its findings are consistent with, and explain the reasoning behind, the term choices already reflected in those later-stage artifacts and in assets/bible_term_registry.json.
Full-book coverage note: All three chapters of Titus were reviewed verse-by-verse. Chapter 1 (greeting, elder qualifications, false teachers), Chapter 2 (household codes, the core passage’s opening at 2:11), and Chapter 3 (the core passage’s continuation through 3:8, submission to authority, avoiding controversies, closing greetings) each contribute load-bearing vocabulary; no chapter is treated as background only.
Part 1: Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
For each of the seven curriculum doctrines, this matrix lists the doctrine’s key Greek terms, the Vietnamese vocabulary available (baseline-reused or candidate), the specific weaknesses of the available vocabulary, and the recommended strategy.
1. Grace That Trains for Godly Living
| Key Term | Available Vietnamese Vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| χάρις (grace) | ân điển [BASELINE] | None as a lexical item; but Titus 2:11-12 makes grace the grammatical subject that trains — a syntactic role Vietnamese must actively preserve, since Vietnamese allows dropping/reassigning subjects in translation | Reuse ân điển exactly; enforce sentence structure so ân điển remains subject of “dạy dỗ và rèn luyện,” never demoted to a circumstance surrounding the believer’s own effort |
| παιδεύω (trains) | rèn luyện, tu tập, tu thân, dạy dỗ | tu tập = Buddhist self-cultivation (subject: the practitioner); tu thân = Confucian self-disciplining of the self (subject: the person); both wrongly relocate agency to the believer | Compound dạy dỗ và rèn luyện, keeping ân điển explicit as agent in the clause; forbid tu tập/tu thân as verb choices for this term |
| εὐσέβεια (godliness) | sự tin kính (candidate), đạo hiếu (rejected), lòng sùng đạo (rejected) | đạo hiếu = Confucian filial piety performance (duty-based, role-based); lòng sùng đạo suggests generic religious devotion/piety without a personal-God referent | New coinage sự tin kính — “kính” (reverence) + “tin” (faith/trust) ties reverence explicitly back to đức tin, avoiding both a duty-based and a generic-piety reading |
| ἀσέβεια (ungodliness) | sự không tin kính | Straightforward negation of the above; low independent risk | Retain as direct antonym, no additional fencing needed |
| κοσμικαὶ ἐπιθυμίαι (worldly passions) | những sự tham muốn của thế gian | ”tham” is the standard Vietnamese Buddhist term for craving/attachment (taṇhā), an impersonal root-cause-of-suffering category to be extinguished through insight, not a moral offense against a personal God | Retain “tham muốn” (widely used, unavoidable) but require “của thế gian” (of the world) to stay attached every occurrence, anchoring the phrase to rebellion against God rather than an impersonal mental state |
2. Qualifications for Elders
| Key Term | Available Vietnamese Vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| πρεσβύτερος (elder) | trưởng lão (candidate), người lớn tuổi (rejected), bô lão (rejected) | Vietnamese village/family culture has a strong Confucian authority-by-seniority model (bô lão = council of village elders by age); người lớn tuổi is pure age-description | trưởng lão is the established Vietnamese Protestant term; every occurrence must carry a note that this is a qualification-based office (character, doctrine, household management, 1:6-9), not automatic seniority |
| ἐπίσκοπος (overseer) | giám mục | This is also the standard Vietnamese Roman Catholic term for a diocesan bishop with regional hierarchical authority over many congregations | Retain giám mục (no better lexical alternative exists) but mandate a translator note at every occurrence in Titus that 1:5-7 uses ἐπίσκοπος and πρεσβύτερος interchangeably for a single local congregational office, not a regional hierarch |
| οἰκονόμος (steward) | người quản gia | Minimal weakness; correctly conveys delegated, not owned, authority | Retain; useful contrast term against any reading of eldership as personal ownership of power |
| μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἀνήρ (one-woman man) | chồng của chỉ một vợ | No natural single-word Vietnamese equivalent exists; literal rendering is necessary | Use full descriptive phrase; flag for a teaching note given historical Vietnamese concubinage practice in some communities and continuing informal polygamous arrangements in a minority of contexts |
| ὑγιαίνουσα διδασκαλία (sound doctrine) | đạo lành | See Part 3 below — this is the single most crowded semantic neighborhood in the elder-qualifications material | New coinage đạo lành retained but fenced (see Part 3) |
| vice list (αὐθάδης, ὀργίλος, πάροινος, πλήκτης, αἰσχροκερδής) | tự phụ, nóng giận, mê rượu, hung bạo, tham lợi bất chính | Generally low risk; ordinary moral vocabulary shared across Vietnamese religious traditions | Retain as listed in 08_core_glossary.md; automated review sufficient except αἰσχροκερδής (see Part 3, “tham” neighborhood) |
3. Sound Doctrine and Good Works
| Key Term | Available Vietnamese Vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| ὑγιαίνουσα διδασκαλία (sound doctrine) | đạο lành | ”Đạo” functions in Vietnamese as a generic label spanning đạo Phật, đạo Nho, đạo Ông Bà (ancestor veneration), đạo Công giáo — heard by many Vietnamese as “one wholesome moral path among several,” reinforced by the common folk saying “đạo nào cũng dạy làm lành” (“every religion teaches people to do good”) | Retain đạo lành (no viable substitute preserves both “teaching” and “healthy/sound” senses) but require every occurrence to be explicitly anchored back to the specific apostolic content about Christ (cross-reference 1:1-3, 2:11-14, 3:4-7), never left as unqualified generic moral teaching |
| καλὰ/ἀγαθὰ ἔργα (good works) | việc lành | Vietnamese Buddhist lay practice is saturated with làm việc thiện / tích công đức — doing good deeds specifically to accumulate merit that improves karmic outcome/rebirth | Retain việc lành (established Bible term) but mandate a translator note at every occurrence (1:16; 2:7,14; 3:1,8,14) that good works are the fruit of a salvation already secured by grace (3:5), never a contributing cause — this note must always be paired with the 3:5 negation for balance |
| τύπος (example) | gương mẫu | Low risk | Retain |
| κοσμέω (adorn) | làm cho rạng rỡ | Low-medium risk; vivid but non-technical | Retain; useful teaching image linking conduct to doctrine’s outward credibility |
4. Salvation by Grace, Not Works
| Key Term | Available Vietnamese Vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| σωτηρία/σώζω (salvation/saved) | sự cứu rỗi / cứu [BASELINE] | None new; baseline forbidden-substitution (sự giải thoát) applies with full force | Reuse exactly; Titus 3:5’s explicit negation of works makes this doctrine’s clearest statement in the whole curriculum — flag as highest-priority passage for the forbidden-substitution check |
| ἔργα … ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ (works done in righteousness) | những việc công bình chúng ta đã làm | Semantically adjacent to việc lành (good works) above — same “việc” (deed/work) root — risking the reader collapsing 3:5’s negated works with 2:14/3:8’s commended works into a single undifferentiated category | Keep the two phrases lexically distinct (việc lành vs. những việc công bình chúng ta đã làm) and require every occurrence of either to be taught as a matched pair: 3:5 excludes; 2:14/3:8 commends the result, never the ground |
| ἔλεος (mercy) | sự thương xót | Risk of conflating with ân điển (grace); Vietnamese has no equally established distinct compound | New/refined term sự thương xót retained, but every occurrence in 3:5 needs a brief distinguishing note: mercy withholds deserved judgment; grace bestows undeserved favor; both exclude merit |
| δικαιωθέντες (justified) | được xưng công bình [BASELINE, extended] | None new | Reuse baseline compound; 3:7 directly grounds κληρονόμος (heir) — teach the two together |
5. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit
| Key Term | Available Vietnamese Vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| παλιγγενεσία (regeneration) | sự sinh lại (candidate); tái sinh, đầu thai, luân hồi (all rejected) | This is the single greatest syncretism risk in the entire curriculum. The literal Greek etymology (“again-birth”) superficially parallels tái sinh, a live, frequently used term in contemporary Vietnamese Buddhist teaching for rebirth within the cycle of saṃsāra; đầu thai and luân hồi name the same cyclical-rebirth concept even more explicitly | Use established Vietnamese Protestant term sự sinh lại (echoing “phải sinh lại,” John 3:3 in the Bản Dịch Truyền Thống). MANDATORY translator/theologian note at every occurrence: this is a single, unrepeatable, Spirit-given new-creation event — the direct doctrinal opposite of a repeating cycle of births |
| ἀνακαίνωσις (renewal) | sự đổi mới | Low-medium; correctly distinct from sự sinh lại by virtue of its ongoing aspect | Retain; teach as the regeneration-then-sanctification pairing parallel to the baseline’s justification/sanctification distinction |
| λουτρόν (washing) | sự rửa | Risk of being heard as ritual/ceremonial washing that produces merit or purification by performance, given Vietnamese familiarity with ritual purification acts (e.g., ceremonial bathing of Buddha statues, ancestral altar-cleaning rites) | Retain sự rửa but require a note framing this as inward, Spirit-wrought spiritual cleansing symbolized by (likely baptismal) washing, not a ritual act that itself confers merit |
| κληρονόμος (heir) | người thừa kế | Vietnamese inheritance expectations are strongly shaped by Confucian bloodline and primogeniture norms (inheritance flows by birth order and blood relation, often earned through demonstrated filial performance) | Retain người thừa kế but mandate a teaching note: heirship here is grace-given status secured entirely by justification in Christ (3:7), not earned by filial performance nor limited by birth-order hierarchy |
| ζωὴ αἰώνιος (eternal life) | sự sống đời đời | Minor risk of being heard as an improved future rebirth rather than an unending relational life | Retain; brief note distinguishing linear unending duration from a favorable turn within a rebirth cycle |
6. Submission to Authority
| Key Term | Available Vietnamese Vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| ὑποτάσσω (submit) | vâng phục | Vietnamese social structure carries strong Confucian tam cương (three bonds: ruler-subject, father-son, husband-wife) in which submission is owed absolutely, permanently, and by fixed rank, and constitutes the subordinate’s core identity and worth | Retain vâng phục (shares root with baseline’s obedience_of_faith) but mandate a note at every occurrence (2:5, wives; 3:1, civil rulers) that this submission is voluntary and gospel-motivated, and does not ground the believer’s ultimate identity or worth in the hierarchy itself |
| πειθαρχέω (be obedient) | tuân theo | Same caution as ὑποτάσσω above | Retain with the same note applied by cross-reference |
| ἀνυπότακτος (insubordinate) | không chịu vâng phục | Direct negation; low independent risk once ὑποτάσσω is fenced | Retain |
| δοῦλος (slave/servant) | tôi tớ (candidate); nô lệ (rejected) | nô lệ carries strongly negative, dehumanizing connotations, compounded by documented Vietnamese historical experience with forced/indentured labor | Use established Vietnamese Bible term tôi tớ throughout (1:1; 2:9-10), preserving the positive sense of devoted, total belonging to a good master, never the literal nô lệ |
| πραΰτης (gentleness) | sự nhu mì | Risk of being misheard through the lens of vô ngã/xả — Buddhist detachment achieved by extinguishing desire and self | Retain sự nhu mì but note this is Christlike strength under control, actively exercised toward others, not passive extinguishing of desire |
7. Avoiding Divisive Controversies
| Key Term | Available Vietnamese Vocabulary | Weakness | Recommended Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| αἱρετικὸς ἄνθρωπος (divisive person) | kẻ gây chia rẽ (candidate); dị giáo/tà giáo (rejected) | dị giáo/tà giáo (“heterodox/heretical teaching”) is content-focused and carries strong inquisitorial historical overtones inappropriate to Titus’s primarily relational/behavioral concern | Use behavior-focused kẻ gây chia rẽ; mandatory note clarifying the term targets persistent, unrepentant factiousness after repeated admonition (3:10), not every doctrinal disagreement |
| γενεαλογία (genealogy) | gia phả | Gia phả carries strong positive cultural weight in Vietnam through ancestor veneration (thờ cúng tổ tiên); a careless rendering could be heard as Scripture condemning family genealogical record-keeping generally | Retain gia phả but require a note that Paul narrowly targets speculative religious/genealogical disputation used by false teachers, not family record-keeping as such |
| ζήτησις (controversies) | sự cãi lẽ vô ích | Low-medium; descriptive phrase rather than single term | Retain |
| περιΐστημι (avoid) | hãy lánh xa | Doctrine’s core verb; low independent risk | Retain |
| μῦθος (myth) | chuyện hoang đường | Vietnam has a rich living tradition of legends about deified ancestors and folk heroes; usable pedagogically as an analogy for what Paul rejects, but must not imply Scripture itself is comparably legendary | Retain with a note restricting the comparison to rival teachers’ speculative material, not Scripture |
Part 2: Missing Vocabulary — No Direct Existing Vietnamese Equivalent
The following concepts have no ready-made single Vietnamese Christian term and required new compound construction (already reflected in 08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json, whose reasoning is recorded here):
- ἐπιφάνεια / ἐπιφαίνω (epiphany/appearing) — no existing Vietnamese Protestant technical term names Titus’s threefold “appearing” structure (grace appearing, 2:11; glory appearing, 2:13; kindness appearing, 3:4). Constructed as đã hiện ra / sự hiện ra, chosen specifically because it can carry a once-for-all, historical (or future one-time) disclosure sense, avoiding any suggestion of a repeatable divine manifestation.
- παιδεύω as applied to grace (training) — no single Vietnamese verb captures “moral formation as by a parent” without importing either Buddhist (tu tập) or Confucian (tu thân) self-effort connotations. Constructed as the two-verb compound dạy dỗ và rèn luyện, deliberately keeping ân điển as grammatical subject.
- εὐσέβεια as a distinct term from generic “religion” or “piety” — sự tin kính is a constructed compound (not a single existing lexical item) chosen to keep the reverence-word visibly rooted in tin (trust/faith).
- σωτήρ applied identically to both Father and Son within one letter — Vietnamese has the term Cứu Chúa but no existing convention for signaling, within translation alone, that 2:13 grammatically identifies one referent (“our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”) rather than two. This must be handled through translator notes rather than vocabulary invention (see Part 5, Ambiguity #2).
- λαὸς περιούσιος (a people for his own possession) — no existing single Vietnamese term; rendered dân riêng, a functional compound requiring OT/covenant background teaching (Exodus 19:5) not otherwise available from context.
None of these gaps are solvable by transliteration (the underlying concepts are not proper nouns); all required compound Vietnamese construction using existing morphemes, consistent with the baseline’s own established practice (e.g., sự xưng công bình, sự làm con nuôi).
Part 3: Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods Requiring Fencing
Vietnamese possesses vocabulary for these concepts, but each rendering sits inside a semantic field already strongly occupied by Buddhist or Confucian doctrine. Each requires explicit translator-note “fencing” at every occurrence, not merely correct lexical selection.
| Vietnamese Term | Competing Occupant of the Semantic Field | Fencing Required |
|---|---|---|
| ân điển (grace) | phước đức/công đức (Buddhist accumulated merit); ơn nghĩa (Confucian reciprocal-debt favor) | [BASELINE] — reconfirmed for Titus 2:11-12 where grace is personified as the agent of training, intensifying the risk that a reader could hear “grace” as a merit-force one accumulates through the training process itself |
| việc lành (good works) | làm việc thiện / tích công đức (doing good deeds to accumulate karma-improving merit) | Every occurrence (1:16; 2:7,14; 3:1,8,14) must be paired with the 3:5 negation of ἔργα ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ as fruit, not cause |
| sự sinh lại (regeneration) | tái sinh / đầu thai / luân hồi (rebirth within saṃsāra) | Mandatory theologian note at every occurrence (3:5); highest-priority fencing in the letter |
| đạo lành (sound doctrine) | đạο as a generic label for any religious system; folk saying “đạo nào cũng dạy làm lành” | Every occurrence must be re-anchored to specific apostolic content about Christ, never left as generic moral teaching |
| tình yêu thương (agapē love) | ái / tham (Buddhist craving/attachment, taṇhā, a root cause of suffering to be extinguished) | Every occurrence (2:4) must be taught as a virtue to be cultivated and increased, the opposite doctrinal direction from a craving to be extinguished |
| vâng phục (submission) | đạo hiếu / tam cương (Confucian absolute, rank-based, identity-defining hierarchy) | Every occurrence (2:5; 3:1) must note voluntary, gospel-motivated submission that does not define the subordinate’s worth |
| trưởng lão (elder) | Confucian seniority-by-age authority (bô lão) | Every occurrence must anchor the office to character/doctrine qualifications (1:6-9), not automatic age-based deference |
| giám mục (overseer) | Vietnamese Roman Catholic diocesan bishop | Every occurrence must clarify synonymy with trưởng lão as a single local office |
| gia phả (genealogy) | Valued Vietnamese ancestor-veneration record-keeping | Must be narrowed to speculative religious disputation, not family record-keeping generally |
| tôi tớ (servant/slave) | nô lệ (dehumanizing forced-labor association) | Retained specifically to avoid this neighborhood, not to enter it — the fencing here is a firm prohibition on nô lệ rather than a note alongside tôi tớ |
| người thừa kế (heir) | Confucian bloodline/primogeniture inheritance | Every occurrence (3:7) must clarify grace-given, justification-grounded status, not birth-order or filial-performance-earned status |
| kẻ gây chia rẽ (divisive person) | dị giáo/tà giáo (content-focused “heretic,” inquisitorial overtones) | Deliberately avoided in favor of behavior-focused rendering; note restricting scope to post-admonition persistent factiousness |
| sự thương xót (mercy) vs. ân điển (grace) | Risk of two Vietnamese terms collapsing into one undifferentiated “divine kindness” | Distinguish: mercy withholds deserved judgment; grace bestows undeserved favor (3:5) |
Part 4: Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
Proper Names (Transliteration Required — Established Bản Dịch Truyền Thống Forms)
| English | Vietnamese Transliteration | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Titus | Tít | Recipient of the letter; consistent across all curriculum materials |
| Paul | Phao-lô | Per baseline standard |
| Crete / Cretan(s) | Cơ-rết / người Cơ-rết | 1:5,12 |
| Zenas | Xê-na | 3:13 |
| Apollos | A-bô-lô | 3:13; already established from Acts/1 Corinthians tradition |
| Artemas | Ác-tê-ma | 3:12 |
| Nicopolis | Ni-cô-bô-li | 3:12, place name |
| Epimenides (implied source of 1:12’s quotation, not named in text) | — | Not transliterated; the text itself only says “one of their own prophets,” so no proper name appears and none should be added |
Theological Terms — Paraphrase (Compound Phrase) Required, Not Transliteration
Consistent with baseline practice (e.g., sự xưng công bình, sự làm con nuôi), the following Titus-specific terms require descriptive Vietnamese compounds rather than transliteration, because they name theological concepts, not proper names, and a bare transliteration would communicate nothing to a Vietnamese reader:
- παλιγγενεσία → sự sinh lại (not a transliterated “pa-lin-ghê-nê-si-a,” which would be theologically opaque)
- ἐπιφάνεια → đã hiện ra / sự hiện ra
- σωτήρ → Cứu Chúa
- ἔργα ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ → những việc công bình chúng ta đã làm
- λαὸς περιούσιος → dân riêng
Terms Retaining Transliteration Despite Being Theological (Established Exception)
- Χριστός → Đấng Christ (transliteration + honorific article, per the AI instruction transliteration standard already fixed in
12_ai_translation_requirements.md); not paraphrased as “Đấng được xức dầu” because Đấng Christ is already the settled Vietnamese Protestant form - Ἰησοῦς → Đức Chúa Giê-xu [BASELINE]
Borderline Case Resolved Against Transliteration
- εὐσέβεια — considered transliterating as a loanword given the difficulty of finding a perfectly clean compound, but rejected in favor of the constructed compound sự tin kính, since an untransliterated Greek loanword would carry zero meaning for a Vietnamese reader and this term recurs too often (1:1; 2:12) to leave opaque.
Part 5: Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × syncretism/confusion potential) and required for Phase 2 review-routing priority, per the baseline’s Critical/High escalation rules:
-
παλιγγενεσία (regeneration), Titus 3:5 — Highest risk in the letter. The etymological parallel to tái sinh/đầu thai/luân hồi (cyclical rebirth, the central Buddhist soteriological goal for the majority religious tradition in the destination culture) makes this the single greatest doctrine-destroying substitution risk. Mandatory theologian review, every occurrence, no exceptions.
-
σωτήρ (Savior) applied to both God the Father (1:3; 3:4) and Jesus Christ (2:13; 3:6), especially the single-referent construction in 2:13 — “The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” is a key Deity-of-Christ text depending on a Greek grammatical construction (Sharp’s rule) that Vietnamese sentence structure does not automatically preserve. Mistranslation could split one divine referent into two figures, weakening the deity-of-Christ argument. Mandatory theologian review.
-
καλὰ/ἀγαθὰ ἔργα (good works, commended) vs. ἔργα ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ (works, excluded as salvation’s ground), 2:14/3:8 vs. 3:5 — Both draw on the same “việc” (deed/work) root in Vietnamese and sit inside the intensely active Vietnamese Buddhist merit-accumulation semantic field (tích công đức). The risk is not mistranslating either phrase individually but a reader collapsing the two directions Paul teaches into one undifferentiated category. Structural, cross-passage risk; mandatory theologian review of both together.
-
ἐπίσκοπος (overseer) rendered giám mục, 1:7 — Direct collision with the standing Vietnamese Roman Catholic institutional term for a regional diocesan bishop; a Vietnamese reader from a Catholic-influenced background could import an entirely different ecclesiology into a text meant to establish a single local congregational office synonymous with πρεσβύτερος.
-
ὑγιαίνουσα διδασκαλία (sound doctrine) rendered đạο lành, recurring 1:9,13; 2:1,2,8 — Vietnamese “đạο” functions as a generic cross-religious label; the widely known folk saying “đạo nào cũng dạy làm lành” actively works against the letter’s insistence on one specific apostolic body of truth. High-frequency term compounding the risk across the whole letter.
-
ὑποτάσσω (submit) rendered vâng phục, 2:5; 3:1 — Collision with Confucian tam cương’s absolute, identity-defining hierarchy risks either over-reading (submission as total, permanent, worth-defining subjection) or, if over-corrected, under-reading (submission as merely optional courtesy). Requires careful, consistent fencing across both occurrences.
-
δοῦλος (slave/servant), 1:1; 2:9-10 — Lower doctrinal-content risk but high emotional/cultural-reception risk if mistranslated as nô lệ, given documented negative historical associations; a wrong choice here could alienate readers before the doctrinal content is even engaged.
-
κληρονόμος (heir), 3:7 — Confucian bloodline/primogeniture inheritance expectations could cause readers to import birth-order or performance-earned inheritance logic into a status the text grounds entirely in grace and justification.
-
αἱρετικὸς ἄνθρωπος (divisive person), 3:10 — Risk of over-application if rendered with content-focused vocabulary (dị giáo/tà giáo) carrying inquisitorial overtones, potentially licensing harsh treatment of ordinary doctrinal disagreement rather than the narrower behavioral target Paul intends.
-
ἐπιφάνεια, threefold across 2:11, 2:13, 3:4 — Lower per-occurrence risk than items above, but structurally important: if any one of the three “appearings” is rendered inconsistently or suggests a repeatable manifestation, the letter’s coherent historical-redemptive argument (grace has appeared; glory will appear; kindness has appeared) is weakened.
Summary for Phase 2 Preparation
This gap analysis confirms that Titus requires no wholesale departure from the Romans baseline’s established terms (grace, salvation, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, faith, righteousness all carry over exactly), but introduces a dense cluster of new High/Critical-risk terms — above all παλιγγενεσία, σωτήρ, καλὰ ἔργα/ἔργα ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ, ἐπίσκοπος, and ὑγιαίνουσα διδασκαλία — concentrated precisely in the core passage (2:11–3:8) and its immediate surrounding argument. Phase 2 segment translation must load the updated translation memory (incorporating 08_core_glossary.md) before processing any Titus segment, with the ranked ambiguities above driving priority review routing per the escalation rules already established in 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.