Does sutta recitation actually entail understanding of the text? I'm particularly interested in 


Chinese morning and evening service
Tibetan sadhanas that a monk recites every day
Theravada Pali suttas and chants


Are these read in modern times by and to an audience that understands the language? I obviously believe some one knows medieval Chinese and Pali or there wouldn't be translations. But is a lengthy period of language study part of becoming a monk, and if it isn't, doesn't that mean that the monks and more so the laity have no idea what is being said?

I have the luxury of reading all the sutras in English translation. It is only dawning on me that possibly for some or most of the time, sutras are akin to a very long dhāraṇī.

This question was prompted by this quote from a Nichiren/SGI book


  Even though you may not understand what you are saying, your voice
  definitely reaches the Gohonzon, all Buddhists dieties, and all
  Buddhas and bodhisattvas over three existences and in the ten
  directions. In response, the entire universe bathes you in the light
  of good fortune.


The Heart of the Lotus Sutra, Ikeda.

To clarify, the question is not "Is mantrayana efficacious?", but if that is the question you want to answer, I already asked that a while back. The question is, as practiced, an in doctrine, do the various Buddhist institutions expect their monks and laity to understand what they chant?
Chanting is an interesting practice and I think each school might have a different take on this.  In my own tradition (Rinzai Zen), the meaning of what's chanted is absolutely irrelevant.  In fact, the liturgy that we use is a Japanese phonetic rendition of a Chinese phonetic rendition of Sanskrit.  Needless to say, no one understands a word of it.  And that includes the folks in our group that speak any one of those three languages.  ;-)