Is Translating Sacred Poetry a Religious Act?

Translation is a challenging task; translating poetry is all the more challenging. The translator must be accurate, faithful to the original in its grammar, vocabulary, and larger frames of cultural context. Yet they must also communicate in the new, host language, showing meaning and feeling to readers unfamiliar with the world of the original text. Sacred poetry poses further problems, since it survives over the centuries in fixed canons of scripture, may be recited in rituals, taught for its spiritual meanings, and treated by believers as the means to transcendent experience. How much of its sacredness, in meaning and usage, can or ought to be communicated in translation? Does a translator have the competence or duty to bring to life the sacred world of the poetry in the translation, so that the sacredness too might be shown to the readers? Examples will be given from my current project of translating the long poems of the Tamil Vaiṣṇava saints known as the ālvārs, c. 6^th-9^th centuries.