Intersemiotic Translation and Transcreation: The Poemóbiles of Augusto de Campos and Julio Plaza in French
Poemóbiles; Augusto de Campos; Julio Plaza; concrete poetry; intersemiotic translation; transcreation.
In Brazilian concrete poetry, some poems stand out for their unique use of media, such as manipulating the physicality of the book page. In the specific case of Poemóbiles (1974), by Augusto de Campos and Julio Plaza, the page is transformed into a manipulable three-dimensional sculpture that results in verbal, visual, auditory, and kinetic meaning. This research aims to translate the Poemóbiles to French according to poetic transcreation, as formulated by Haroldo de Campos, and based on analyses of object-poems grounded in Semiotics. In Translation Studies, we consider the theories of intersemiotic translation and Audiovisual Translation to problematize the concept of the text and how textuality affects the translation of poetry. To delve deeper into the method of transcreation, we analyze the translation A Rosa Doente, by Augusto de Campos, of the poem The Sick Rose, by William Blake. The analysis of A Rosa Doente suggests an approach to poetic transcreation that considers the indexical aspects of the original work in order to effectively modify the process of transcreation composition. The analyses of the Poemóbiles demonstrate that the physical presentation and the reading processs of object-poems highlight the materiality of the book and the page as an integral part of meaning. We therefore emphasize the importance of a translation approach that considers the materiality of poetry as much as its verbal aspect.