ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a range of translations between Latin American autochthonous religions before the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century. The transference of sacred elements was undertaken by the means of the scriptura franca, a pictorial-logographic system of Mesoamerica, what can be interpreted as scripura franca ‘Khipu’ of South America, as well as through the translation of iconography. These translation technologies were used by (but not limited to) dominant multi-religious and linguistic/semiotic powers. No systematic research, however, has been undertaken in this field. I examine religious communication in selected multilingual societies carried out through both intersemiotic scriptura francae and writing systems. I also examine the ‘translation’ of deities and sacred beings in the polytheist Aztec Empire of Mesoamerica and Inka Empire of Middle Andes. The objective is to lay the basis for future analyses of diachronic and synchronic processes of translations as diffusion of religious knowledge between various groups expressed in different languages, through a study of (inter)semiotic and conceptual systems.
