The gināns constitute the main corpus of the devotional literature of the Nizari Ismailis of South Asia. Nizari Ismaili tradition attributes the composition of these gināns to Ismaili pīrs (preacher-saints) who came from Iran to South Asia to promulgate the Nizari Ismaili daʿwa from the seventh/fourteenth century onward. Earlier scholars branded the gināns as “conversion literature”. While scholarship on the gināns has progressed over the last few decades and overturned such superficial conclusions, most studies have focused on the Indic historical, cultural and spiritual contexts of the gināns. My study focuses on the two central figures of the gināns, the Imam and the pīr, both designated as the satgūru (true guide) through whom the spiritual aspirant attains salvation. I argue that the imamology of the gināns is a “translation” of the Ismaili doctrines of the Imam found in Persian Nizari literature according to Tony Stewart’s notion of translation as the “search for equivalence” through “refractive mirroring” and “dynamic equivalence.” First, I compare the ginānic depiction of the Imam as the archetypal figure of ʿAlī and the tenth avatāra of Vishnu with the Nizari Ismaili doctrine of the Imam as the eternal Alī and maẓhar of the Command of God. Drawing on the Vedantic expositions of the avatāra by Shankara (eight century) and Ramanuja (d. 1137) and the Nizari Ismaili imamology of Nasīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274), I argue that the ginānic presentation of the Imam as the avatāra is a translation, through “refractive mirroring,” of the Nizari doctrine of maẓhar. Second, I compare the gināns’ presentation of the pīr as the satgūru, the spiritual and physical inheritor of the Prophet Muḥammad through the Ismaili Imam lineage, and the avatāra of Brahmā with the post-thirteenth century Persian Nizari doctrine of the ḥujjat as the supreme teacher of the adepts, the spiritual offspring of the Imam, and the maẓhar of the eternal archetype of Salmān-i Fārsī and the Universal Intellect. Third, I look at how the gināns portray and depict the figure of the Imam and pīr with the astral symbols (sun, moon) and bridal imagery (husband, wife) and show how this symbolism follows directly from earlier Arabo-Persian Ismaili imamology. In sum, this analysis demonstrates how the imamology of the gināns – their conception of the Imam and pīr – is a “translation” of the Nizari Ismaili imamology in an Indic context by way of dynamic equivalence.