ABSTRACT
The concrete ‘ideogramas’ produced by the Noigandres poets of São Paulo in the 1950s were ‘verbivocovisual’ intermedial texts operating with highly reduced verbal material carefully structured by employing a spatial syntax. These structures often resulted from exploring the possibilities inherent in the element of chance (usually with regard to spelling) encountered in the material selected. The Brazilian poets’ theory concerning the ‘transcreation’ of poetic texts demands that the target text has an ‘isomorphic’ relation to the original. Successful transcreations of Noigandres ideograms require a careful exploration of their structure and finding verbal material that happens to permit a similar organisation. Such transcreations will also serve a critical function. The study examines more or less adequate transcreations of ‘ideogramas’ by Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari, Ronaldo Azeredo and José Lino Grünewald into English; translators include Mary Ellen Solt and Edwin Morgan.
