On Mantras and Other ‘Untranslatable' Forms of Religious Language 1

Abstract

To what extent does specialist, fixed religious language pose challenges to translation? While sacred languages may be subject to a prohibition on translation, the stylistic features and formality that characterize many forms of ritual or liturgical speech can make these particularly difficult to translate. There appears to be an inverse relation between the intelligibility of such forms and their efficacy or pragmatic function. This tradeoff is especially apparent in ‘magic’ words: the apparently nonsensical forms found across traditions, including in Hindu Tantric mantras. I develop a number of approaches borrowed from semiotics and anthropology to further our understanding of such special modes of language and how they relate to translation, including recognition of their poetic function; of their use of syntactic sequences to diagram ritual events; and of the convergence between magic words and divine names as especially powerful indexical signs.