This work examines the letters exchanged between Guimarães Rosa and his German, Italian and American translators,aiming to apprehend and analyse Rosa s perspectives on sound symbolism. It examines the reflections on the theme that can be inferred from (a) the general considerations that Rosa elaborates in the body of the letters sent to his translators, and (b) the detailed instructions he adds in attachments to resolve specific questions posed by them. It is shown, by analysis of the epistles, that Rosa’s linguistic creation tends to encompass suggestive sonority in a deliberate and somewhat calculated manner, by means of singular onomatopoeias, alliterations, assonances and rhythmic patterns, resulting in a sound symbolism. Charging the texts with expressiveness, strength and plasticity, sound symbolism is an important ingredient in Rosa s strategy to deprive the reader of the walking stick of common place (letter to Harriet de Onis) and to invite him to engage in a relationship with language that might go over the strictly logical-reflexive plane (letter to Edoardo Bizzarri). The study shows, moreover, that Rosa’s reflections and attitudes as a translator can be related to linguistic theories that tend to refuse the principle of the arbitrariness of the sign, also showing partial convergences with theoretical discourses that defend sound symbolism, especially those of Jespersen and Jakobson.